Darwin's Birthday Party 2018

60 Years of Central Dogma

Wednesday, 7th February 2018 - 4:00pm
Flett Lecture Theatre, Natural History Museum, Exhibition Road, London, SW7 5BD

Speaker:Professor Aoife McLysaght
Title: Turning noise into information

Abstract: TBC

Speaker Bio: Aoife McLysaght is a Professor of Genetics in Trinity College Dublin, where she has led a research group since 2003. She was a member of the international consortium that published the first draft of the Human Genome sequence in 2001; was the first to discover novel human-specific genes, in 2009; identified links between gene duplication patterns and Copy Number Variation (CNV) pathogenicity; and has made significant contributions to our understanding of the human genome, as well as the genomes of other animals, plants and viruses.

Aoife’s research team has been funded through prestigious President of Ireland Young Researcher Award (PIYRA) and a European Research Council (ERC) Starting Researcher Award. Aoife is on the editorial board of Molecular Biology and Evolution, and Cell Reports, she was Treasurer of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution for three years, and receives frequent invitations to speak at major international conferences and participate in the organisation of international meetings. Recently, Aoife has been elected President of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution, and has also been awarded an ERC Consolidator grant.

Aoife takes a keen interest in communicating science to the general public in an engaging and accessible manner. She has given many talks at public events, including music festivals, The Royal Institution and Brian Cox and Robin Ince’s Christmas Science shows. She is a frequent contributor to radio discussions including on BBC Radio 4, appeared on live TV, contributed to TV science documentaries, and has been a regular columnist for the Irish Times science page.

Professor Matthew Cobb
Title: What did Crick’s ‘central dogma’ really mean?

Abstract:60 years ago, Francis Crick’s article ‘On protein synthesis’ was published, based on lecture he gave the previous year. I will explore what he was trying to do in the lecture, and in particular

what exactly he meant by the ‘central dogma’, the extent to which this was a change over previous ways of understanding what is in a gene, and how his ideas have been misinterpreted and misunderstood, in particular in textbooks.

Speaker Bio: Matthew Cobb is Professor of Zoology at the University of Manchester. As well as studying the sense of smell in Drosophila maggots, he is an historian of science and has recently been studying the post-war history of genetics. He is the author of Life’s Greatest Secret: The Race to Crack the Genetic Code, which was shortlisted for the Royal Society Book Prize in 2015, and has made radio programmes about the life of Sydney Brenner and about the science and ethics of CRISPR.

Location:

Flett Lecture Theatre, Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London - Map

Poster:

Download a copy of the poster here:

Darwin's Birthday flyer.pdf