"Epigenetics and the Wiring and Re-wiring of Genomic Information"

Invited Speaker: Laura Landweber, PhD

Global DNA rearrangements occur in many cells but are most exaggerated in ciliated protozoa. During development, the pond-dwelling organism Oxytricha destroys 95% of its genome, severely fragmenting its chromosomes, and then it sorts and reorders hundreds of thousands of remaining pieces. Recently we discovered that RNA molecules provide a scaffold to orchestrate these DNA rearrangements, unveiling a new role for RNA, normally thought of as a passive message or intermediate in gene expression. This provides an example of inheritance beyond the conventional DNA genome, hinting at the power of RNA molecules to shape the information in our genomes.

Laura Landweber is a Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University. She received her A.B. from Princeton in 1989 and her Ph.D. from Harvard in 1993. Before returning to Princeton as faculty in 1994, she was a Junior Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows. She is an author of over 100 publications and an editor of 3 books. She is currently Co-Editor-in-Chief of Biology Direct (biology-direct.com), a new journal experimenting with open, signed peer review. Recent honors include the 2008 New York Academy of Sciences Blavatnik Award and election as a 2005 Fellow of AAAS.