NIH Director’s Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series

All lectures this season are in Lipsett Amphitheater from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m. ET except where noted.

Watch remotely at the time of the lecture
via https://videocast.nih.gov.
– or –
Binge-watch the archives dating back more than 20 years at https://videocast.nih.gov/PastEvents?c=3
or on our YouTube Channel.

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Oh, and our next three lectures are…

Wisdom on Aging from the RNA World: Old Molecules in Young Roles

Myriam Gorospe, Ph.D.
National Institute of Aging, NIH

Florence Mahoney Lecture on Aging

Ribonucleic acids (RNAs) are ancient macromolecules, likely the first molecules capable of heredity. Although RNAs of different sizes, sequences, and functions have been studied intensely over the past six decades, particular attention has been given to messenger (m)RNAs, the templates for protein synthesis. Interest in noncoding (nc)RNAs, which comprise a far larger and more diverse segment of the RNA family, has also escalated in recent years, especially as many ncRNAs, such as microRNAs and long noncoding (lnc)RNAs, directly influence protein expression programs.

A fly’s eye view of corneal development

Jessica Treisman, Ph.D.
NYU Grossman School of Medicine

The Drosophila corneal lens is a precisely curved structure made entirely of apical extracellular matrix that resembles the mammalian cornea in its ability to focus light onto the photoreceptors. The non-neuronal cone and pigment cells that secrete the corneal lens differentiate from the same progenitor cells in the eye imaginal disc as the photoreceptors. Photoreceptor differentiation requires a zinc finger transcription factor, Glass.

Wiring Specificity of Neural Circuits

Liqun Luo, Ph.D.
Stanford University School of Medicine

Developing brains use a limited number of molecules to specify connection specificity of a much larger number of neurons and synapses. How is this feat achieved? I will first describe our work using the Drosophila olfactory circuit as a model to address this question. I will then discuss functions of homologs of wiring molecules we identified in the fly olfactory circuits in determining wiring specificity of the mouse hippocampal and other circuits.

Objectives:

*To appreciate the importance of wiring specificity in neural circuit function

This page was last updated on Friday, January 20, 2023