All seminars are on Friday at 12 PM unless otherwise noted. Seminars are located at 147 Nanaline Duke Building unless otherwise noted.
NAME TITLE HOST
SHARON GERECHT DUKE UNIVERSITY, PRATT SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING YANG
SEPTEMBER 25 “ENGINEERING HUMAN BLOOD VESSELS FOR MECHANISM, MODELING, AND THERAPEUTICS”
TARUN KAPOOR THE ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY GRADUATE
OCTOBER 9 “REGULATING WHEN AND WHERE A MICROTUBULE ASSEMBLES: STUDENTS
*NOZAKI MEMORIAL LECTURE PUT A Y-TUBULIN RING ON IT”
BO LI UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA, CHAPEL HILL YOKOYAMA
NOVEMBER 13 TITLE: TBA
ELIZABETH NOLAN MASSACHUESETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY YOKOYAMA
DECEMBER 11 TITLE: TBA
*FRIDOVICH MEMORIAL LECTURE
~ *
Fridovich Memorial Lecture
Dr. Irwin Fridovich was a biochemist and a familiar figure on the Duke campus for more than 60 years. He came to Duke as a graduate student in 1952, earning his PhD in biochemistry in 1955. He became an assistant professor in biochemistry at Duke University in 1961 and a full professor in 1971, was named James B. Duke Professor of Biochemistry in 1976 and held the position as professor emeritus since 1996 until his death.
Working with Joe McCord, Dr. Fridovich discovered the enzyme superoxide dismutase (SOD), which living cells use to defuse a reactive form of oxygen called superoxide, now more commonly referred to as oxygen free radicals. Their paper, published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry in November 1969, has been cited more than 9,300 times by other scientists and opened an entirely new field of medicine and biology devoted to oxygen free radicals. His laboratory went on to describe additional forms of the enzyme, including a new manganese-containing enzyme and an iron-containing superoxide dismutase from Escherichia coli. Over his career, he published approximately 400 scientific articles, and discovered superoxide dismutase, essentially founding the field of Free Radical Biology.
To honor his scientific legacy, the Department of Biochemistry & Cell Biology holds the Irwin Fridovich Memorial Lecture each year, bringing a distinguished scientist to Duke to share their work with our faculty, trainees, and staff.
Hseih Memorial Lecture
Dr. Tao-Shih Hsieh earned his B.S. in Chemistry from National Taiwan University in 1970 and his Ph.D. in Biophysical Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1977. He joined Duke as Assistant Professor of Biochemistry in 1981, became Professor of Biochemistry in 1993, and was named Emeritus Professor of Biochemistry in 2013. From 2009 to 2016, he also served as Director and Distinguished Research Fellow of the Institute of Cellular and Organismic Biology at Academia Sinica in Taiwan.
Dr. Hsieh made many contributions to the field of DNA topoisomerases and chromatin dynamics, and was the first to identify, purify and characterize eukaryotic type II DNA topoisomerase from Drosophila. He later studied additional topoisomerases in the same system, including work on topoisomerase IIIa in mitochondrial function and aging, as well as topoisomerase IIIb in genome stability. He was elected a Fellow of Academia Sinica in 2012 and a Fellow of the World Academy of Sciences in 2013.
The Department of Biochemistry & Cell Biology holds the annual Hsieh Memorial Lecture, funded by an endowment established in memory of Dr. Hsieh, who was known as a highly regarded mentor, teacher, and researcher.
Kamin Memorial Lecture
Dr. Henry Kamin was a Professor of Biochemistry at Duke University whose career at Duke spanned 42 years. His work centered on nutritional biochemistry, and he was active in the study of flavins and flavoproteins, serving as editor of the Proceedings of the Third International Symposium on Flavins and Flavoproteins, held in Durham, North Carolina and published in 1971.
His scientific standing was recognized by two five-year appointments to the Editorial Board of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, membership on the National Science Foundation Panel on Metabolic Biology, and the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academy of Sciences.
The Department of Biochemistry & Cell Biology holds the annual Henry Kamin Memorial Lecture, which honors his 42-year career at Duke University, his steadfast integrity, and his many contributions to nutritional biochemistry. His wife, Dottie Kamin, initiated the lecture to honor her husband using monies provided by the Henry and Dorothy Lingle Kamin Endowment Fund of the Triangle Community Foundation.
Modrich Distinguished Lecture
Dr. Paul Modrich is the James B. Duke Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry. After earning his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Stanford University and holding a faculty position at UC Berkeley, he was recruited to the Department of Biochemistry at Duke in 1976.
Starting on the question of DNA repair in the late 1970s, his key contribution has been the identification of the mismatch repair system, a proofreading mechanism that identifies and corrects errors that occur in the DNA code during chromosome replication. His work on the human pathway demonstrated that cancer cells characterized by microsatellite instability are defective in mismatch repair and resistant to the action of certain chemotherapeutic drugs. Inactivation of mismatch repair is the cause of the most common form of hereditary colon cancer.
In 2015, Dr. Modrich was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry along with Tomas Lindahl and Aziz Sancar for mechanistic studies of DNA repair. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
The Department of Biochemistry holds the annual Modrich Distinguished Lecture, which honors his exceptional career and many contributions he has made to the field of nucleic acid biochemistry. Dr. Modrich chooses and hosts a distinguished lecture each year.
Nozaki Memorial Lecture
Dr. Yasuhiko Nozaki spent four decades at Duke doing painstaking work in pure compounds and precise measurements as the basis of solid progress in scientific knowledge. Working in the laboratory of Charles Tanford, he oversaw solubility measurements on amino acids and peptides that produced the values for urea and guanidine hydrochloride used to understand how these compounds unfold proteins. With Dr. Tanford, he also published work in 1971 on the establishment of a hydrophobicity scale, which assigns a value to each amino acid by determination of the partition equilibrium of this amino acid between a non-polar solvent and water. These measurements remain a reference point for scientists studying how proteins fold and how chemicals cause them to unfold.
To honor his extraordinary contributions, the Department of Biochemistry & Cell Biology holds the annual Nozaki Distinguished Lecture. The Biochemistry Graduate Student Committee organizes the series, selecting and inviting world-renowned speakers to the department. The lecture is supported by the Dr. and Mrs. Yasuhiko Nozaki Lecture Fund of the Triangle Community Foundation.
Past Seminars
Spring 2025
Research Forum - Schumacher Lab
MARIA SCHUMACHER, Department of Biochemistry
Duke University School of Medicine
Date: January 17, 2025
Title: Elucidating a Molecular Switch Controlling Development/Antibiotic Production
and
A Moonlighting NAP: Integrating DNA Organization
Host: Biochemistry Department
GARY WU, MD, Ferdinand G. Weisbrod Professor in Gastroenterology
Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania
Date: January 24, 2025
Title: Integrated Interactions Between Diet, the Microbiome, and Metabolites in Inflammatory Bowel Disease
Host: Dr. Shuo Han
RYAN FLYNN, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology
Harvard University
Date: February 28, 2025
Title: Cell Surface glycoRNA Biology
Host: Dr. Kate Meyer
DANIELA NICASTRO, PhD, Professor, Department of Cell Biology
UT Southwestern
Date: March 7, 2025
Title: Probing the Molecular Organization of Cells and Organelles Using Cryo-Electron Tomography
Host: Dr. Seok-Yong Lee
Research Forum - Yang Lab
ZOE SHAN, PhD Student, Department of Biochemistry (Yang Lab)
Duke University School of Medicine
Date: March 21, 2025
Title: Scrambling the Fate of Cells: TMEM16F as a Key Modulator of Ferroptosis
Host: Biochemistry Department
OLIVIA RISSLAND, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Genetics
University of Colorado School of Medicine
Date: March 28, 2025
Title: Potent Gene Regulation by the Open Reading Frame
Host: Dr. Kate Meyer
FALL 2024
Research Forum
TETSUYA HIRATA, PhD, Research Scholar, Department of Biochemistry (Boyce Lab)
Duke University School of Medicine
Date: September 20, 2024
Title: O-GlcNAc Signaling in the Early Secretory Pathway
Host: Biochemistry Department
LEE ZOU, PhD, Professor & Chair, Department of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology
Duke University School of Medicine
Date: September 27, 2024
Title: Understanding and Targeting DNA Replication Stress in Cancer Therapy
Host: Dr. Pei Zhou
ALEXANDRA DEACONESCU, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Molecular Biology, Cell Biology and Biochemistry
Brown University
Date: October 4, 2024
Title: Mechanical Underlying Evolvability and Adaptation to Stress
Host: Dr. Richard Brennan
JAMES KIRBY, MD, Professor, Department of Pathology
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Date: November 8, 2024
Title: Streptothricin F, a Miscoding Translational Inhibitor and Antibiotic Scaffold Targeting Gram-Negative Pathogens
Host: Dr. Pei Zhou
Research Forum
KARLY FORKER, PhD Student, Department of Biochemistry (Zhou Lab)
Duke University School of Medicine
Date: November 15, 2024
Title: Modeling is Believing? How AlphaFold2 can Mislead Molecular Interpretation
Host: Biochemistry Department
Research Forum
SKYLER COCHRANE, PhD, Research Scholar, Department of Biochemistry (Zhou Lab)
Duke University School of Medicine
Date: November 15, 2024
Title: Novel Antibiotics Targeting Lipid A Enzymes in Gram-negative Bacteria
Host: Biochemistry Department
Irwin Fridovich Distinguished Lecture
CHRISTOPHER CHANG, PhD, Edward and Virginia Taylor Chair Professor of Bioorganic Chemistry, Department of Chemistry
Princeton University
Date: November 22, 2024
Title: Activity-Based Sensing Approaches to Decipher Single-Atom Signaling
Host: Dr. Kenichi Yokoyama
YASUSHI OKAMURA, PhD, Professor, Department of Physiology, Graduate School of Medicine
Osaka University
Date: December 13, 2024
Title: Translating Membrane Potential into Phosphoinositide Signalling by Voltage-Sensing Phosphatase; Mechanisms and Biological Roles
Host: Dr. Huanghe Yang