Nobel Prize winner Richard Roberts to speak at UNL Oct. 8
Released on 09/28/2004, at 2:00 AM
Office of University Communications
University of Nebraska–Lincoln
WHEN: Friday, Oct. 8, 2004
WHERE: Nebraska Union, 1400 R St. (8:45 a.m.), 548 Hamilton Hall (3 p.m.), 112 Hamilton Hall (3:30 p.m.)
A Nobel Prize-winning chemist will speak at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Oct. 8. Richard J. Roberts discovered "split genes" and mRNA splicing for which he won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1993 (shared with Phillip Sharp).
Roberts' visit is sponsored by Nebraska Center for Virology, NU President Emeritus L. Dennis Smith and the Rho Chapter of Phi Lambda Upsilon through a national PLU activities grant. The UNL chapter of the honorary chemical society is made up of graduate and undergraduate students in UNL's Department of Chemistry.
Roberts' schedule of public events: 8:45 a.m., lecture, "The Genomics of Restriction and Modification," Fourth Annual Symposium in Virology, Nebraska Union, 1400 R St.; 3 p.m., PLU reception, 548 Hamilton Hall; 3:30 p.m., lecture, "The Genomics of Restriction and Modification," Chemistry Colloquium, 112 Hamilton Hall.
The research director at New England Biolabs in Beverly, Mass., Roberts attended the University of Sheffield (England), where he earned a bachelor of science degree in chemistry (1965) and a doctorate in organic chemistry (1968). His postdoctoral research was carried out at Harvard, where he studied the tRNAs that are involved in the biosynthesis of bacterial cell walls. In 1972 he joined Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
Roberts began work on the newly discovered Type II restriction enzymes in 1972 and in the next few years more than 100 such enzymes were discovered and characterized in Roberts' laboratory. Roberts has also been involved in studies of Adenovirus-2 and discovered split genes and mRNA splicing in 1977, for which he received the Nobel Prize. His laboratory sequenced the 35,937 nucleotide Adenovirus-2 genome and wrote some of the first programs for sequence assembly and analysis. His interests focus on the identification of restriction enzyme and methylase genes within the GenBank database and the development of rapid methods to assay their function.
CONTACT: JoDell Whittington, Phi Lambda Upsilon, (402) 472-1430 or (402) 770-6915 (cellular)