~ for immediate release

     
news release  April 2, 2007

Public invited to attend FREE Nevada Medal lecture
Research by MIT's Susan Lindquist, 2007 Nevada Medalist, has led to progress in understanding diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's

                  
Dr. Susan Lindquist                                                             The Mind of Yeast: How can individual yeast cells
                                                                                             yield insights into complex diseases of the brain?

Reno, Nev.—The Desert Research Institute presents its 2007 Nevada Medal to Massachusetts Institute of Technology molecular biologist Dr. Susan Lindquist, whose work has had an enormous impact in fields as diverse as medicine, bioengineering, basic molecular and cell biology and evolution.  As part of the Nevada Medal activities, Lindquist will present a FREE public lecture on Wednesday, April 11 at 4 p.m. at DRI's Stout Conference Center.  The lecture is sponsored by AT&T.

LECTURE ABSTRACT: Proteins do just about everything for us, from powering and moving our muscles to forming the complex units in our brains.  But they must fold into just the right shape to do their jobs.  When they misfold, the consequences can be deadly, leading to Alzheimer’s disease and the human form of “mad-cow” disease.  Remarkably, a similar process has been discovered in yeast, where it does no harm and can even give cells a new capacity to survive changing environments.  Because yeast are so simple to grow and manipulate, they provide a great opportunity to study this process, providing potential new therapeutic discoveries and a much greater understanding of genetics. 

ABOUT DR. LINDQUIST: Lindquist has spent decades uncovering clues to the culprit for killers like Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, Creutzfeld-Jacob disease and mad cow disease.  The underlying theme of her multifaceted work is protein folding and misfolding.  Proteins are the basis of how biology gets things done.  They start out in the body as long strings of amino acids and have to assemble themselves into complex shapes—a process scientists call folding—before they can do anything.  They are the main constituent of our brains, muscles, hair, skin, and blood vessels.

When proteins misfold, they can clump together and the clumps can often gather in the brain, where they are believed to cause the symptoms of mad cow or Alzheimer’s disease.  Cystic fibrosis, an inherited form of emphysema and even many cancers are also believed to result form protein misfolding.  Protein misfolding has been implicated as a major mechanism in many severe neurological disorders including Parkinson’s and Huntington’s diseases.

In the Lindquist Lab, located at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Mass., Lindquist and her colleagues have developed yeast strains that serve as living test tubes in which to study neurodegenerative disorders, unraveling how protein folding contributes to them. The scientists have succeeded in reproducing many of the biological consequences of Parkinson’s disease in yeast cells and are screening for drugs to prevent and treat the disease.

The Lindquist Lab has also used yeast to prove that inherited traits can be passed on via prion proteins, without any change in DNA or RNA, findings that have added a twist to the traditional understanding of inheritance.

Heat shock proteins are a group of molecular chaperone proteins that, as their name might suggest, guide other proteins to fold and mature correctly. Lindquist has established that heat shock protein 90 can reveal hidden genetic variations in fruit flies and in cress plants under certain environmental conditions. Most of these variations are likely to be harmful, but a few unusual combinations may produce valuable new traits, spurring the pace of evolution.

Her determination to translate her fundamental biological research into clinical treatments and cures for diseases is further illustrated by the fact that she and a colleague, Jeff Kelly from Scripps Research Institute, co-founded a biotech company, FoldRx Pharmaceuticals Inc. to expedite the discovery of drugs to alleviate the diseases.

Lindquist is a member and former director (2001-2004) of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Mass., a professor of biology at MIT and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. At the University of Chicago, she was the Albert D. Lasker Professor of Medical Sciences from 1999-2001 and a professor in the Department of Molecular Biology since 1978. She received a Ph.D. in biology from Harvard University in 1976, and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1997, the National Academy of Sciences in 1997 and the Institute of Medicine in 2006. Lindquist’s honors also include a spot on Discover magazine’s 2002 list of the top 50 women scientists and Scientific American’s top 50 leaders in business, policy and research.

ABOUT THE NEVADA MEDAL: The Nevada Medal—the only science medal awarded by any state in the U.S.—was established by DRI in 1988 to acknowledge outstanding achievement in science and engineering.  It includes a $20,000 honorarium and minted silver medal provided by the shareholders of communication company AT&T.  Nominations for the Nevada Medal are accepted continuously from universities, private firms, research organizations, professional societies and individuals. Lindquist will receive her award at the Reno Nevada Medal Dinner on Tuesday, April 10, at the Grand Sierra Resort at 6 p.m. 

For more information about the Nevada Medal, go to http://ia.dri.edu/NVmedal/.

ABOUT DRI: A nonprofit, statewide division of the Nevada System of Higher Education, or NSHE, DRI pursues a full-time program of basic and applied environmental research on a local, national, and international scale.  More than 500 full- and part-time scientists, technicians, and support staff conduct more than 300 research projects at DRI annually.  DRI generates $50 million in total revenue consisting predominately of competitively won research contracts and grants. The State of Nevada provides critical funding in support of DRI's administration, operations, and maintenance through the NSHE education budget.  While DRI’s portion of the NSHE budget is approximately one percent, the institute leverages these funds to enhance its competitiveness.

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