Simpson Memorial Lecture to be Held on 19 March 2009
Ralf Bartenschlager, professor and head of the Department of Molecular Virology at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, will present the Robert T. Simpson Memorial Lecture in Molecular Medicine at 4:00 p.m. on Thursday, 19 March 2009, in 100 Life Sciences Building (Berg Auditorium) on the Penn State University Park campus. This free public lecture, titled "New Insights into Hepatitis C Virus Replication and Assembly: Exploitation of Host-Cell Pathways," is sponsored by the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
Bartenschlager is a leader in the field of hepatitis C research. He was one of the scientists who developed a cell-culture system for production of infectious hepatitis C viruses for use in research. Infection with the hepatitis C virus is a major cause of chronic hepatitis, liver cirrhosis, and primary carcinomas in liver cells.
Bartenschlager also helped to determine the role of the NS3/4A protease enzyme in counteracting innate immunity to infection by the hepatitis C virus. In addition, he has mapped the cis-acting ribonucleic acid (RNA) elements required for replication of viral RNA, and he has identified the kissing-loop interaction at the three-prime (3') end of the genome of the hepatitis C virus. His current work is aimed at optimizing his cell-culture system, understanding the mechanisms that regulate RNA replication and assembly, and discovering novel roles of viral proteins in the life cycles of the hepatitis C virus and the Dengue virus. He also would like to investigate how these two viruses counteract a host's immune system.
Bartenschlager earned a doctoral degree in molecular biology at the University of Heidelberg in 1990. After spending one year as a postdoctoral scholar at the university, he moved to the Central Research Unit of Hoffmann-La Roche in Basel, Switzerland in 1991. In 1994, he became an assistant professor at the University of Mainz and was promoted to full professor in 2001. In 2002, he became a full professor and head of the Department of Molecular Virology at the University of Heidelberg. Bartenschlager is the recipient of several awards, including the Aschoff Medal, which was given to him by the Medical Society of Freiburg in 2006.
The Robert T. Simpson Memorial Lectureship honors Robert T. Simpson, formerly the Verne M. Willaman Professor of Molecular Biology, and is made possible through donations from his family, friends, and colleagues. For more than 35 years, Simpson was an international leader in research on chromatin -- a fundamental component of chromosomes -- and its role in gene regulation. He was at the National Institutes of Health from 1970 until 1995, when he came to Penn State. His addition to the faculty of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology is considered to have contributed substantially to placing Penn State, and the department, at the forefront of chromatin research, and to have greatly enhanced Penn State's research and educational missions. For more information about the lecture, contact Kouacou Konan at kvk10@psu.edu or 863-8254.
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