Nobel laureate Thomas Cech, president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, or HHMI, and a University of Colorado distinguished professor, will give the 2003 Gamow Memorial Lecture on campus on April 2.
The title of Cech's talk, "From Catalytic RNA to Howard Hughes," will take the audience from his early research with ribonucleic acid, or RNA, to his team's groundbreaking discovery that RNA could catalyze biochemical reactions. This discovery in 1982 at CU-Boulder led to Cech winning the 1989 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, as well as a host of other prestigious national and international awards.
Free and open to the public, Cech's lecture will be held at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, April 2, in Macky Auditorium on the CU-Boulder campus. The George Gamow Lecture is a prominent lecture series that brings renowned scientists to campus to address a general audience of non-scientists.
If RNA could provide both heritable "information" and catalytic function, then one could envision a vastly simplified scenario for the origins of life based on RNA, according to Cech. He also has teamed up with HHMI and CU-Boulder researchers in recent years to identify the protective protein "caps" that form the ends of all human chromosomes. This finding may eventually have applications for cellular aging and human diseases.
In January 2000, Cech accepted an offer to become president of HHMI, headquartered in Chevy Chase, Md. He had been a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator since 1988, and retains his faculty positions and laboratory at CU.
Founded in 1953, HHMI is a nonprofit scientific and philanthropic organization. It is dedicated to the promotion of human knowledge within the basic sciences, principally medical research and medical education, and the use of such knowledge for the benefit of humanity.
It is the nation's leading privately funded biomedical research association and one of the world's largest philanthropies. HHMI investigators are actively involved in both research and education - training students in their laboratories and, in many cases, teaching undergraduates and younger students or reaching out to the public.
Cech also was named winner of the prestigious National Medal of Science in 1995, one of only eight scientists nationwide selected to receive the award that year.
The National Medal of Science is the highest scientific honor bestowed by the president of the United States.
Cech came to CU-Boulder in 1978 as an assistant professor of chemistry and in 1983 became a full professor. He received a bachelor's degree from Iowa's Grinnell College in 1970 and a doctorate in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1975.
A member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Cech has been honored with many awards during his career, including the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award, the Pfizer Award in Enzyme Chemistry, the National Academy of Sciences Award in Molecular Biology and the Heineken Prize from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences in 1988.
He also is a Lifetime Research Professor of the American Cancer Society.
HHMI has awarded CU-Boulder's Biological Science Initiative $5.6 million since 1989 to strengthen undergraduate biological education and K-12 outreach.
The funds are being used to engage more undergraduates with CU faculty, broadening access for women, underrepresented minorities and first-generation CU students. In addition, BSI brings hands-on science education to thousands of Colorado K-12 teachers and students through campus teacher workshops, courses and special outreach programs to schools.
The George Gamow lecture series started in 1971 and honors the late CU-Boulder physics professor who was pivotal in developing the big-bang theory of the creation of the universe. He also was known for his many books popularizing science for non-scientific audiences.
For more information call (303) 492-4318.