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Renowned Biomedical Researcher Headlines ASU Science Lectureship

March 16, 2011

Dr. Susan L. Lindquist, a member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, will deliver the 35th annual West Texas Medical Associates Distinguished Lectureship in Science Honoring Dr. Roy E. Moon on Tuesday, March 22, in the ASU Houston Harte University Center, 1910 Rosemont Drive.

Lindquist’s talk, titled “Using Very Simple Organisms to Help Solve Very Difficult Diseases,” will begin at 8 p.m. March 22 in the University Center’s C.J. Davidson Conference Center. Prior to the public lecture, Lindquist will also meet with ASU students to discuss “Lamarck Redux: Prions, Hsp90, and the Inheritance of Environmentally Acquired Traits” at 2 p.m. Both lectures are open free to the public.

A pioneer in the study of protein folding, Lindquist established that the state of protein equilibrium has profound and completely unexpected effects on normal biology and disease. Her work also established the molecular basis for protein-based mechanisms of inheritance. More recently, she has built tractable genetic models of complex protein misfolding diseases, including Parkinson’s and Huntington’s, which are providing new insights on the underlying causes of these ailments.

Lindquist is also a professor of biology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and an associate member of the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT. She received her Ph.D. in biology from Harvard University and was a post-doctoral fellow of the American Cancer Society at the University of Chicago.

The WTMA Lectureship honors Dr. Roy E. Moon, a longtime San Angelo obstetrician and gynecologist, who died in 1976. He practiced for 28 years with Clinic Hospital Medical Associates, now West Texas Medical Associates. The lectureship was established in 1976 and is underwritten by a grant to ASU from members of WTMA.

Each year, the lectureship brings a scientist of national prominence to ASU for public lectures, colloquia and informal discussions.

For more information, call the ASU College of Sciences at 942-2024.