Abstract
The RNA segment of the lecture will focus on the structural biology of riboswitches, mRNA elements consisting of a sensing domain and an expression platform, that undergo conformational changes on metabolite binding, and utilize on-off switches to control gene expression. This segment will be followed by our recent research on the structural biology of Argonaute and Dicer proteins and emerging mechanistic insights into cleavage events associated with RNA silencing.
The chromatin segment of the lecture will describe recently determined structures of productive and autoinhibitory DNMT1-DNA complexes, thereby formulating a two-state model of eukaryotic maintenance DNA methylation. Finally, the speaker will outline the structural studies of readers and erasers of histone marks conducted by him and his research group and the impact of small molecules that perturb these epigenetic regulation processes.
About the speaker
Prof Dinshaw Patel received his MSc from California Institute of Technology in 1963 and PhD from New York University in 1968. He worked at AT&T Bell Laboratories from 1968 to 1984. He had taught at Columbia University before he joined the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center as Abby Rockefeller Mauze Chair in Experimental Therapeutics in 1992. He has also been Professor of the Weill School of Medical Sciences at Cornell University since 1994.
Prof Patel did his postdoctoral research in photobiology at NYU's Medical Center and at Bell Labs. He received his early Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) training at Caltech, and has continued to apply NMR to investigate the structure and dynamics of biopolymers since joining the Bell Labs. In recent years, his research group has made groundbreaking discoveries in exploring the inner workings of proteins and nucleic acids. Prof Patel was the President of the Harvey Society in 1998-99, and was elected a Member of the US National Academy of Sciences in 2009.
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Free and open to the public. Seating is on a first-come first-served basis.
Institute for Advanced Study
Enquiries ias@ust.hk / 2358 5912
http://ias.ust.hk
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