Erich Nigg
Cell Cycle Control of Chromosome Segregation: Focus on Kinetochores and Centrosomes
Shizuo Akira
Functional Diversity of Macrophage/Monocyte Subsets
CANCELLED Jan Vilček
CANCELLED
Greg Hannon
A Small RNA-based Innate Immune System Guards the Integrity of Germ Cell Genomes
Elena Conti
The RNA Exosome-Ribosome Connection: Coupling Synthesis to Degradation
Tom Misteli
The Cell Biology of the Genome
Mark Ptashne
The Logic of Gene Regulation
Steven Benner
Artificial Genetics and Evolution in the New Millennium
Mendel Lectures take place in Mendel´s refectory in the Mendel Museum Brno and are streamed to
- Hasek Hall at the Institute of Molecular Genetics, The Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague
If you are interested in live streaming, contact Gabriela Pavlikova (pavlikova@med.muni.cz).
Mendel´s refectory, Augustinian Abbey
Mendlovo namesti 1a, Brno
- 17 years of tradition
- Legacy of J. G. Mendel
- Meet and Talk to the World´s Top Scientists Including Nobel Laureates
- Open to all
Genetics
one of the fastest growing fields of science, whose roots lead directly to Brno and Gregor Johann Mendel – and the world's top scientists in discussion with students and young researchers: these are key attributes of the prestigious Mendel Lectures series, which has been held for eight years at the Mendel Museum in Brno.
The first series of Mendel Lectures was in 2003, when it was devoted to the 50th anniversary of the discovery of DNA. Since then, Brno has been visited by more than 100 scientists, including 13 Nobel Prize laureates. The lectures held in the refectory of the Augustinian Abbey in Old Brno – the very place where Mendel, the founder of genetics, worked almost 200 years ago – are attended annually by almost one thousand undergraduates, PhD students and scientists, who meet leading figures of science for whom otherwise they would have to travel the world. Valuable contacts are made at the event.
Beginnings
The Mendel Lectures are the brainchild of a team of experts from several European institutions. They include Anna and Kim Nasmyth from the United Kingdom and Jan Motlík of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. “I was a member of the Academic Council of the Academy of Sciences, which did everything it could to accommodate the so-called Brno Initiative. This initiative by leading world geneticists was an attempt to bring science back to the Abbey in Old Brno. The path was not easy, but eventually a mutual understanding was reached between the heads of the Abbey and the scientific community, in view of the importance and uniqueness of the mission of Gregor Mendel,” says Professor Motlík.
The celebration in 2003 of the 50th anniversary of the discovery of DNA structure provided a unique opportunity to revitalize scientific activities at the Abbey. The British Council, which was involved in all of these activities, even donated a copy of the original photograph of Watson and Crick with the model of DNA, Professor Motlík remembers. At the same time a special lecture series was arranged. These became the basis for the Mendel Lectures.
“My involvement with Brno began in 2000, with the planning of the exhibition ‘Mendel: The Genius of Genetics’ and the inaugural conference in 2002, ‘EMBO Workshop, Genetics after the Genome’. The Mendel Lectures grew from this conference and I am delighted that the series continues to attract outstanding speakers,” says Anna Nasmyth, who, with her husband, renowned Oxford scientist Kim Nasmyth, is a former organizer of the Lectures.
First lectures
As its name “The Road to the DNA” suggests, the first series of lectures was focused on the historical context of genetics. Subsequent series have addressed more topical scientific findings. “A small selection committee chooses which scientists to invite each year,” says Anna Nasmyth, explaining how plans for each new series originate. And of course, each of the speakers is a world leader in his or her field.
In Brno the Mendel Lectures were organized by Jirina Relichova of Masaryk University in cooperation with Jan Motlik of the Czech Academy of Sciences and Imma Mautner Markhof from Austria, who looked for sponsors. “The lectures have been – since the beginning – very well attended, with an average audience of eighty,” says Professor Relichová, before adding, “All the lecturers expressed the honour they felt at being invited to speak in such an exceptional environment, where Mendel lived and worked, and in which genetics as a science has its origins.”
Money and finance
Masaryk University has become the patron of the Mendel Lectures. At the beginning financing of the Lectures was supported by Vienna geneticist Gustav Ammerer (through his charity the VFG), the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and the British Council. Later on the Lectures were supported financially by several institutions, including Masaryk University, the Vienna VFG, the Regional Authority of South Moravia, the City of Brno, IMP Vienna, the Augustinian Abbey in Old Brno and the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. Between 2012 - 2014 the lectures were supported by a grant of the Czech Ministry of Education and European Union (Pluricell). Since 2015 the Mendel Lectures have been supported by the International Clinical Research Center of St. Anne´s University Hospital Brno. Since 2016 ML have become part of Masaryk University Life Science Seminar Series and have been allocated a steady budget from university financial sources.
Scientific Advisory Board:
Main organizers:
Faculty of Medicine, Masaryk University
- Adrian Krainer - Article in "M" (News for MUNI)
- Adrian Krainer - Interview for Czech TV Hyde Park Civilizace
- Mendel Lectures with Gerald P. Schatten and MUNI Seminar Series in "M" News from the University (in Czech)
- Fraser Stoddart - Interview for Czech TV Hyde Park Civilizace
- Fraser Stoddart - Article online.muni.cz (in Czech)
- online.muni.cz - Na Masarykově univerzitě budou přednášet dva nobelisté (in Czech)
- Steven Benner - Interview for Czech TV Hyde Park Civilizace
- Paul Modrich - Article by online.muni.cz
- Interview with Ada Yonath for Czech TV Hyde Park Civilizace
- Videos of selected talks are being posted on YOUTUBE
- All pictures from the talks can be found on our FACEBOOK
- Mendel lectures among Masaryk University Top Ten
- Interview with Nobel laureate Jules Hoffmann
- On Jules A. Hoffmann's talk in Brno
- Interview with Nobel laureate Kurt Wüthrich
- Anniversary Mendel Lectures – press release on life broadcasting of talks to University Campus Brno
- Interview with Günter Blobel for Czech TV
- Anniversary Mendel Lectures – article in Czech press
- Gregor Mendel and 21st Century Medicine – article by Dr. Murray from Brigham and Woman´s Hospital and Harvard medical school in Boston.
- Interview with Nobel laureate Aaron Ciechanover (in Czech)
at 5 PM
Erich Nigg is a Swiss cell biologist and Director of the Biozentrum, University of Basel. Erich Nigg received his PhD in 1980 from the ETH Zürich (Biochemistry).
Subsequently he carried out research at the University of California in San Diego, the ETH Zürich and the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research (ISREC). From 1995 he was Professor of Molecular Biology at the University of Geneva before he was appointed, in 1999, to a Directorship at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany.
Since 2009 Erich Nigg is Professor of Cell Biology and Director of the Biozentrum at the University of Basel, Switzerland. After early work on biological membranes, the structure of the cell nucleus and mechanisms of intracellular signal transduction, Erich Nigg’s research focused on the cell cycle.
His studies contribute to our understanding of the segregation of human chromosomes during cell division, the regulation of mitosis, as well as the structure and function of human centrosomes. This work is relevant to understanding diseases, because mitotic errors contribute to the genetic instability of cancer cells and centrosome abnormalities are known to cause disease (brain diseases and ciliopathies).
at 5 PM
Shizuo Akira is a professor at the Department of Host Defense, Osaka University, Japan.
He has made ground-breaking discoveries in the field of immunology, most significantly in the area of innate host defense mechanisms.
Shizuo Akira gained a M.D. in School of Medicine from Osaka University in 1977. In 1984 he earned a PhD from Osaka University. Till 1987, he did post-doctoral research at University of California, Berkeley. Beside being the world's most-cited scientist, he has also been recognised, in the years 2006 and 2007, as having published the greatest number of ‘Hot Papers’ (11 papers) over the preceding two years.
He is the recipient of several international awards, including the Gairdner Foundation International Award (2011), Robert Koch Prize, the Milstein Award (2007), and the William B. Coley Award. Among his greatest discoveries is the demonstration, through the ablation of toll-like receptor (TLR)s genes, that TLRs recognize a discrete collection of molecules of microbial origin, and later the RNA helicases, RIG-I (retinoic-acid-inducible protein I) and MDA5 (melanoma differentiation-associated protein 5).
All molecules belong to the pattern recognition receptors, which detects intruding pathogens and initiates antimicrobial responses in the host.
at 5 PM
Jan T. Vilček M.D., Ph.D. (born June 17, 1933) is a biomedical scientist, educator, inventor and philanthropist.
He is a professor in the Department of Microbiology at the New York University School of Medicine, and Chairman and CEO of The Vilcek Foundation.
Vilček, a native of Bratislava, Slovakia, (then part of Czechoslovakia) received his M.D. degree from Comenius University Medical School, Bratislava in 1957; and his Ph.D. in Virology from the Institute of Virology, Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, Czechoslovakia in 1962.
In 1964, Jan Vilček, with his wife Marica, defected from Communist Czechoslovakia during a three-day visit to Vienna. In 1965, the Vilčeks immigrated to the United States, and have since lived in New York City. Vilček devoted his scientific career to studies of soluble mediators that regulate the immune system (cytokines), including interferon and tumor necrosis factor (TNF).
at 5 PM
Gregory Hannon is a pioneer in the study of RNA interference (RNAi), a process in which double-stranded RNA molecules induce gene silencing.
Hannon and colleagues have elucidated key elements of the RNAi machinery.
During the past several years, the Hannon lab has focused on the roles of small RNAs in germ cells, which tend to have the most elaborate set of small RNA pathways of any cell type. They have discovered an essential role for small RNAs, called Piwi-interacting RNAs (piRNAs), that are critical for proper oocyte development and guard the genome against transposable elements.
This year, the lab conducted two screens, one in the fruit fly germline and another in somatic cells, to search for new components of the pathway that generates piRNAs. They identified dozens of genes that are required for piRNA production, offering insight into how germ cells ensure genomic integrity. The Hannon lab also strives to understand the biology of cancer cells, with a focus on breast and pancreatic cancer. They have led the way in using RNAi to study cancer biology and genetics, generating libraries of short-hairpin RNAs (shRNAs) that have been widely applied in gene-silencing studies.
These libraries can then be used to identify new therapeutic targets for specific disease subtypes. In addition, they are exploring the roles of small RNAs as oncogenes and tumor suppressors and using genetic approaches to understand the biology of resistance to currently used cancer therapies.
Another research thrust of Hannon’s team exploits the power of next-generation sequencing to understand the biology of the mammalian genome. Their efforts range from the identification of new classes of small RNAs to understanding human evolution and diversity, including an emphasis on the evolution of the epigenome and its role in driving cell-fate specification.
at 5 PM
at 5 PM
Tom Misteli, Ph.D. is a Swiss-born (Solothurn) cell biologist and pioneer in the field of genome cell biology.
He is a Distinguished Investigator at the National Cancer Institute, NIH, Bethesda, MD, United States.
He is the Director of the NCI Center for Cancer Research at the NIH. He was the Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Cell Biology and is the current editor of Current Opinion in Cell Biology.
Tom Misteli is best known for his work on elucidation of how genomes function in living cells. While a post-doc at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York, United States, he developed methods to visualize proteins in the nucleus of living mammalian cells allowing for the first time to study gene expression in intact cells. His more recent work focuses on the role of genome organization and nuclear architecture on differentiation and disease.
His cell biological elucidation of the mechanisms involved in the pre-mature aging disease Hutchinson–Gilford progeria syndrome have revealed novel mechanisms of human aging. For his work he has won numerous awards including the Flemming Award, The Gold Medal of the Charles University, The Beerman Award, and the Feulgen Prize.
at 5 PM
Mark Ptashne (born June 5, 1940 in Chicago) is a molecular biologist and violinist. He currently holds the Ludwig Chair of Molecular Biology at Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.
He was the first scientist to demonstrate specific binding between protein and DNA, and his lifelong work has been the elucidation of the molecular mechanisms of switch between lytic and lysogenic lifecyle of bacteriophage lambda, as well as how the yeast transcriptional activator Gal4 works. He was the originator of the "ball and stick" model of transcription factor function, demonstrating in bacteria and in yeast that they typically consist of separable regions that mediate DNA binding and interaction with transcriptional activators or repressors.
In 1980 he cofounded Genetics Institute, Inc. with Thomas Maniatis, which was acquired by Wyeth 1996. In 1985, he was awarded the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University. He won the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research in 1997, and the Massry Prize from the Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California in 1998. He has written popular books for a wider scientific audience, including his book Genes and Signals.
at 5 PM
Steven Albert Benner (born October 23, 1954) has been a professor at Harvard University, ETH Zurich, and the University of Florida where he was the V.T. & Louise Jackson Distinguished Professor of Chemistry.
In 2005, he founded The Westheimer Institute of Science and Technology (TWIST) and the Foundation For Applied Molecular Evolution. Benner has also founded the companies EraGen Biosciences and Firebird BioMolecular Sciences LLC.
Benner and his colleagues were the first to synthesize a gene, beginning the field of synthetic biology. He was instrumental in establishing the field of paleogenetics.
He is interested in the origin of life and the chemical conditions and processes needed to produce RNA. Benner has worked with NASA to develop detectors for alien genetic materials, using the definition of life developed by the NASA Exobiology Discipline Working Group in 1992, “a self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution”.