Nonsense-mediated mRNA Decay in Health and Disease

Wednesday, January 9, 2019 | 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. ET

Lynne E. Maquat, Ph.D.

J. Lowell Orbison Endowed Chair and Professor

Director, University of Rochester Center for RNA Biology

Chair, University of Rochester Graduate Women in Science

University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry

Website

Summary

Dr. Maquat is the J. Lowell Orbison Endowed Chair and Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics in the School of Medicine and Dentistry, Director of the Center for RNA Biology, and Chair of Graduate Women in Science at the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY. After obtaining her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and undertaking post-doctoral work at the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research, she joined Roswell Park Cancer Institute before moving to the University of Rochester. Professor Maquat discovered mammalian-cell nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD) in 1981 and, subsequently while elucidating the mechanism of NMD, the exon-junction complex (EJC) and how the EJC marks mRNAs for a quality-control “pioneer” round of protein synthesis. She also discovered Staufen-mediated mRNA decay, which mechanistically competes with NMD and, by so doing, new roles for short interspersed elements and long non-coding RNAs. Additional current interests include microRNA decay and functional links between transcription factors and RNA-binding proteins.