Student Hosted Colloquium

Thursday, April 12th
Professor Carolyn Bertozzi
"Chemistry in Living Systems: Shedding Light on Glycans"

4:15pm - 5:15pm Braun Lecture Hall
S.G.Mudd Chemistry Building
Stanford University




This special lecture is hosted by Novartis Institutes in recognition and encouragement of continued excellence within the area of synthetic organic chemistry. The lecture is free and open to the public. All Stanford University Chemistry students are encouraged to attend this special event.

About the Seminar:
Our research group studies cell surface interactions that contribute to human health and disease with specific projects in the areas of cancer, inflammation and bacterial infection. We use the techniques of organic synthesis, genetics and biochemistry as tools to study and manipulate complex cellular processes. Much of our research involves cell surface oligosaccharides, biopolymers that contribute to cell surface recognition and cell-cell communication, and that pose challenging synthetic targets. The biology of these structures, which are found as common posttranslational modifications of cell surface proteins, has attracted increasing attention since the initial sequence of the human genome was reported. Genome comparisons have revealed that the human genome is not much larger than those of lower organisms, but vastly more abundant in posttranslational machinery, accounting for numerous complex functions found only in mammals.

About Bertozzi:
Carolyn Bertozzi is the T.Z. and Irmgard Chu Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology at UC Berkeley, an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Director of the Molecular Foundry, a nanoscience institute at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She completed her undergraduate degree in Chemistry from Harvard University in 1988 and her Ph.D. in Chemistry from UC Berkeley in 1993. After completing postdoctoral work at UCSF in the field of cellular immunology, she joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 1996. Prof. Bertozzi¹s research interests span the disciplines of chemistry and biology with an emphasis on studies of cell surface glycosylation pertinent to disease states. Her lab focuses on profiling changes in cell surface glycosylation associated with cancer, inflammation and bacterial infection, and exploiting this information for development of diagnostic and therapeutic approaches. In addition, her group develops nanoscience-based technologies for probing cell function and for medical diagnostics.

Questions
Please contact Patricia Dwyer at 650-723-4770.