Hans Tuppy-Lectures

7. Hans Tuppy-Lecture

7. Hans Tuppy-Lecture

Remembering who we are: how chromatin controls cell identity

Susan Gasser, Professor invité at the University of Lausanne and Director of the ISREC Foundation

13. Juni 2022, 18:00

Hörsaal 1, University of Vienna Biology Building (UBB), Djerassiplatz 1, 1030 Wien

Abstract

In each multicellular organism, the species’s genome is the same in every cell, yet cells have dramatically sizes, shapes and functions – indeed – each cell type expresses a different set of proteins at different levels. Moreover, cells remember through cell division, and throughout the life of an organism, which set of genes and proteins they should express. This cellular memory depends on epigenetic marks, chromatin compaction and other post-translational mechanisms of RNA degradation or translational control. The epigenetic memory of cell type can be perturbed by environmental stress, stochastic variation and age. I will review what is known about histone methylation and the phenomenon of cell fate determination and its loss in aging organisms. The impact of losing the most widespread epigenetic mark turns out not to be what one expected.

Altern ist keine Krankheit, sondern der unvermeidbare Gedächtnisverlust in den Zellen
Interview mit Susan Gasser (ÖAW, 2. Juni 2022)

Susan Gasser

Susan M. Gasser completed her BA at the University of Chicago and her PhD at the University of Basel in Biochemistry in 1982, with Gottfried Schatz. After a postdoc with Ulrich Laemmli at the University of Geneva, she established her own laboratory at the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research (ISREC) in 1986. In 2001, she was named professor of Molecular Biology at the University of Geneva, continuing her laboratory’s use of high-resolution timelapse microscopy to study chromosome organization. From 2004 – 2019, Susan was the Director of the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research in Basel, where she also led a research group until the end of 2020. She was in parallel Professor of Molecular Biology at the University of Basel. Since January 2021, Susan Gasser is professor invité at the University of Lausanne and Director of the ISREC Foundation, where she is helping shape the new Agora institute of translational cancer research. 

Susan Gasser was elected to the Académie de France, Leopoldina, EMBO, AAAS and the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences, and received the INSERM International Prize in 2011, the FEBS | EMBO Women in Science Award in 2012, the Weizmann Institute Women in Science award in 2013, and honorary doctorates from the University of Lausanne and the Charles University in Prague. In Switzerland she was the recipient of the Friedrich Miescher Award, the National Latsis Prize, and the Otto Naegeli Award for the promotion of medical research. She has participated in numerous review boards and advisory committees in Switzerland and across Europe and in Japan, and currently serves on the ETH board and the Swiss Science Council. From 1993 – 2003 she was on the SNSF research council, and from 2000 to 2004 she was Vice Chair and then Chairperson of the EMBO Council. Susan led the Gender Committee of the Swiss National Science Foundation from 2014- 2019, and initiated the PRIMA program for the promotion of women in academia.