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The Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) cordially invites you to attend the talk

‘Enhancer-Promoter Communication in Living Drosophila Embryos’

By Mike Levine
Director of the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton University

Date: Wed., 29 May 2019, 11.00 a.m.
Venue: IMP Lecture Hall, Campus-Vienna-Biocenter 1, 1030 Vienna

Mike Levine is a developmental and cell biologist internationally recognised for co-discovering and pioneering the research of homeotic genes in Drosophila, which lead to fundamental insights into the organisation and regulation of developmental genes. He pioneered techniques to visualise and measure gene activity in the developing embryo – early on in fixed embryos, and, more recently, by imaging dynamics of gene activities in living embryos and by using single-cell sequencing technologies. Most of his discoveries are based on studies in the fruitfly. While Drosophila remains the ‘powerhouse’ of the Levine lab, his team is also using the sea squirt, Ciona intestinalis, as a model to understand how vertebrate features have evolved.

Mike Levine obtained a BA in Genetics from UC Berkeley in 1976 and a PhD in Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry from Yale in 1981. From 1982 to 1983, he worked as a postdoc in Basel, where he co-discovered the homeobox, together with Ernst Hafen and Bill McGinnis. Mike Levine held faculty positions at Columbia University and the University of California, Berkeley, and was a Visiting Professor of Zoology at the University of Zurich. Four years ago, he moved to Princeton University where he is currently the Director of the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics.

Mike Levine was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, he received the Molecular Biology Award from the National Academy of Sciences, the Wilbur Cross Medal from Yale University, and the EG Conklin Medal from the Society of Development Biology.

In his Max Birnstiel Lecture, Mike Levine will talk about one of the key questions that he has been passionate about ever since discovering homeotic genes - what makes developmental gene expression patterns precise in time and space? - and will shed light on enhancer-promoter communication in living Drosophila embryos. He was invited to the IMP by Andrea Pauli.

About the Max Birnstiel Lectures

The Max Birnstiel Lectures are a special series of seminars at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna. They are named after the founding director of the institute, Max L. Birnstiel, who passed away in 2014. Each year, five to six scientists are invited to deliver one of these lectures. Previous lecturers are distinguished leaders in their respective fields, among them a number of Nobel Prize laureates. The Max Birnstiel Lectures attract considerable attention in the wider scientific community and invariably draw a large audience to the IMP.

Programme of the Max Birnstiel Lectures
www.imp.ac.at/seminars/max-birnstiel-lecture-series

Videos of past Max Birnstiel Lectures
https://www.imp.ac.at/research/lectures-seminars/max-birnstiel-lecture-videos/