Williams College, will deliver the fall Sigma Xi Research Lectures
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass - Charles Lovett, the Phillip and Dorothy Schein Professor of Chemistry and director of the Bronfman Science Center at Williams College, will deliver the fall Sigma Xi Research Lectures. The lectures will be given on Thursday and Friday, Oct. 23 and 24, at 4:15 p.m. in The Science Center's Wege Auditorium. The lectures are free and open to the public.The Thursday lecture is titled "DNA repair in mutations, disease, and aging" and on Friday, Lovett will discuss "Learning about DNA repair from bacteria."
"All organisms have evolved elaborate mechanisms to repair damage to their genomes from environmental factors and normal metabolic activities," explains Lovett. "Preserving the integrity of our genetic material through DNA repair is essential as it is estimated that about one million DNA lesions occur in each of our cells every day."
The first talk will focus on how DNA damage is repaired and how deficient DNA repair can cause mutations that have been linked to cancer and other diseases as well as aging.
The second talk will describe the work in his laboratory on DNA repair in bacteria and how studying DNA repair in simple organisms has provided insights into the repair of damaged DNA in higher organisms.
With the assistance of Williams students, Lovett has identified, isolated and characterized a number of genes and their protein products that either regulate gene expression or are involved directly with DNA repair. By studying the DNA mechanism in Bacillus subtilis which responds to damage, Lovett is working to elucidate the connections between DNA damage (which can give rise to harmful mutation or cell death) and cancer. His research has been supported with numerous grants from the National Science Foundation.
Lovett chairs the Science Executive Committee and was instrumental in overseeing the completion of the $47 million Unified Science Center: the 118,909 square foot, three-story complex is home to the sciences at Williams College.
He received his B.S. in Chemistry from California State Polytechnic University and his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Cornell University. He has been at Williams since 1985.
Sigma Xi was founded in 1886 as an honor society for science and engineering. The Williams Chapter of Sigma Xi was founded in 1969.
