Season 2023/2024

Susumu Tonegawa received his B. Sc. from Kyoto University and his Ph.D. in molecular biology from University of California, San Diego (UCSD). He then undertook postdoctoral work at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, CA, before starting his own lab at the Basel Institute for Immunology in Basel, Switzerland, where he made his landmark discoveries in immunology. Tonegawa was the sole recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1987 for “his discovery of the genetic principle for generation of antibody diversity.” Tonegawa switched his field of research to brain science and founded MIT’s Center for Learning and Memory in 1994, which was renamed The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory in 2002. Using advanced techniques of gene manipulation, Tonegawa has been unraveling the molecular, cellular and neural circuit mechanisms that underlie learning and memory. Tonegawa was the first to introduce the gene knockout technology to the mammalian behavioral brain research. Tonegawa demonstrated synaptic plasticity is crucial for memory formation, first by knocking out the αCaMKII gene and subsequently by restricting the knockout of NMDA receptors to just one type of neurons, the hippocampal CA1 pyramidal neurons. Tonegawa was also the first to apply the optogenetics to memory research and discovered the molecular and cellular level substrate for memory termed engrams. Most recently Tonegawa found overlapping engrams generated across multiple related experiences represent the generalizable abstract knowledge (schema or semantic memory). His studies have broad implications for psychiatric and neurologic diseases. Tonegawa is currently the Picower Professor of Biology and Neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Principal Investigator of the RIKEN-MIT Laboratory for Neural Circuit Genetics at MIT, as well as a RIKEN Fellow. He is also an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at MIT. Tonegawa is a Member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. Tonegawa’s other numerous honors include: the Order of Culture (Bunka-Kunsho) bestowed by Japan’s Emperor, the Albert and Mary Lasker Award granted by the Lasker Foundation in the US, the Gairdner Foundation International Award granted by the Gairdner Foundation of Canada, the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize of Columbia University in the U.S., and the Robert Koch Prize granted by the Koch Foundation of Germany.

Amita Sehgal is the John Herr Musser Professor of Neuroscience, Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Director of the Chronobiology and Sleep Institute (CSI) at the University of Pennsylvania. Prof. Sehgal received her Ph.D. from the Weill Graduate School, Cornell University, and conducted her postdoctoral work at Rockefeller University. Her research focuses on the genetic basis of circadian rhythms and sleep. Sehgal serves on many national and international advisory panels and as editor for several journals. Her work has been recognized through a number of awards and honors, which include the Outstanding Scientific Acievement award from the Sleep Research Society, the Javits award from NINDS, the Michael Brown and Stanley Cohen Research awards at Penn, the Honma prize (Japan) for biological rhythms and the Switzer Prize from UCLA. Sehgal is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences USA.

Sarah Tishkoff is the David and Lyn Silfen University Professor in Genetics and Biology at the University of Pennsylvania, holding appointments in the School of Medicine and the School of Arts and Sciences. She is also the Director of the Penn Center for Global Genomics & Health Equity in the Department of Genetics.

Dr. Tishkoff studies genomic and phenotypic variation in ethnically diverse Africans. Her research combines field work, laboratory research, and computational methods to examine African population history, the genetic basis of anthropometric, cardiovascular, and immune related traits, and how humans have adapted to diverse environments and diets.

Dr. Tishkoff is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is a recipient of an NIH Pioneer Award, a David and Lucile Packard Career Award, a Burroughs/Wellcome Fund Career Award, the ASHG Curt Stern award, and a Penn Integrates Knowledge (PIK) endowed chair. She is on the NAS Board of Global Health and the scientific advisory board for the Packard Fellowships in Science and Engineering, and is on the editorial boards at Cell, PLOS Genetics, Genome Research and G3 (Genes, Genomes, and Genetics).

Her research is supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Chan Zuckerberg Institute, and the American Diabetes Association.

Johannes Walter was born in Munich, Germany in 1967 and moved to the United States when he was one year old. He grew up in San Diego, California and went to college at UC Berkeley. In 1987, he participated in the undergraduate research program at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. In 1989, he began graduate school at Yale University, where he studied transcriptional regulation in fruit flies, graduating with a Ph.D in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry. In 1995, he joined the laboratory of the late John Newport at UC San Diego. There, he used frog egg extracts to develop the first soluble cell-free system that supports vertebrate chromosomal DNA replication. In 1999, he joined the faculty at Harvard Medical School (HMS) as an assistant professor in Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology. He was promoted to full professor in 2010 and joined the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in 2013. He currently teaches DNA replication and repair in the graduate molecular biology course (BCMP200).

Dr. Walter’s lab has made the following contributions to our understanding of DNA replication and repair:

• identified a replication-coupled proteolysis pathway that limits DNA replication to a single round per cell cycle
• discovered how the replicative DNA helicase (CMG) interacts with DNA at the replication fork
• elucidated two mechanisms of replication-coupled DNA interstrand cross-link (ICL) repair
• showed that the Fanconi anemia pathway promotes incisions during ICL repair
• discovered that DNA protein cross-links are repaired by a replication-coupled protease
• elucidated the mechanism of replication termination in vertebrates
• pioneered the use of frog egg extracts for single molecule studies of DNA replication and repair

Dr. Randy Schekman is a Professor in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He studied the enzymology of DNA replication as a graduate student with Arthur Kornberg at Stanford University. His current interest in cellular membranes developed during a postdoctoral period with S. J. Singer at the UC Diego. Among his awards are the Gairdner International Award, the Albert Lasker Award in Basic Medical Research and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, which he shared with James Rothman and Thomas Südhof. He served as the Editor of the Annual Reviews of Cell and Developmental Biology and as Editor-in-Chief of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and eLife. Schekman leads an effort supported by the Sergey Brin Family Foundation to identify and support basic research on the mechanisms of Parkinson’s Disease initiation and progression (https://parkinsonsroadmap.org).

Schekman’s laboratory investigates the mechanism of vesicular traffic in the secretory pathway in eukaryotic cells. Currently the lab investigates the mechanism of biogenesis of extracellular vesicles including how small RNAs are sorted for secretion in exosomes and the means by which these vesicles are internalized and function in target cells.

After his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley and postdoctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dr. Cech joined the faculty of the University of Colorado Boulder in 1978. In 1982 Dr. Cech and his research group announced that an RNA molecule from Tetrahymena, a single-celled pond organism, cut and rejoined chemical bonds in the complete absence of proteins. This discovery of self-splicing RNA provided the first exception to the long-held belief that biological reactions are always catalyzed by proteins. In addition, it has been heralded as providing a new, plausible scenario for the origin of life; because RNA can be both an information-carrying molecule and a catalyst, perhaps the first self-reproducing system consisted of RNA alone.
Dr. Cech became a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator in 1988 and Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry in 1990. From 2000-2009, he served as president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the largest private biomedical research organization in the U.S.A. He then returned to full-time research and teaching at the University of Colorado Boulder. Dr. Cech’s work has been recognized by many national and international awards and prizes, including the Heineken Prize of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences (1988), the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award (1988), the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1989), and the National Medal of Science (1995). Dr. Cech has been elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (1987) and National Academy of Medicine (2000) and is a lifetime professor of the American Cancer Society.

Abstract: We’ve known since 1960 that RNA serves as a messenger, carrying information from DNA to instruct the formation of proteins. But RNA is much more: it can catalyze biochemical reactions, make cells immortal, and direct the editing of the genome itself. Beyond this, RNA “reaches back” to help control what genes are expressed. So this single-stranded daughter of DNA is truly magical.