Maintaining our Genome:- It Takes Two to Tango
The William H Stein Memorial Lecture
Event Details
- Type
- Friday Lecture Series
- Speaker(s)
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Stephen West, Ph.D., FMedSci, principal group leader, The Francis Crick Institute
- Speaker bio(s)
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Our genetic material (DNA) is continually subjected to damage, either from endogenous sources such as reactive oxygen species that arise as by-products of oxidative metabolism, from the breakdown of replication forks during cell growth, or by agents in the environment such as ionising radiation or carcinogenic chemicals. To cope with such damage, cells employ a variety of repair processes that are specialised to recognise different types of lesions in DNA. These repair systems are essential for the maintenance of genome integrity and for cancer avoidance. The focus of the West lab's current research is to understand how homologous recombination (HR) repairs broken chromosomes using the sister chromatid as a template. To gain insights into this process they have spent many years identifying the proteins required for efficient repair and utilise biochemistry, structural biology and cell biological approaches to study their remarkable biological functions. Understanding exactly how these proteins work provides new insights on the fundamental processes that keep our cells healthy and point towards new ways to prevent or treat cancers caused by defects in HR.
Stephen West was born in Hessle, in Yorkshire, England. He obtained his BSc and Ph.D. from Newcastle University. His PhD thesis was on the identification of the E. coli RecA protein. Steve then worked as a post-doc with Paul Howard-Flanders, a pioneer of the DNA repair field, at Yale University from 1978-1985. In 1985, he established his independent research group at the Clare Hall Laboratories, then part of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (subsequently Cancer Research UK). He became Deputy Director of Clare Hall Labs in 2005. Steve’s laboratory moved to the new Francis Crick Institute in London in 2015. He has received numerous awards for his scientific achievements, including the Royal Medal (2022), the Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine (2007), the Novartis Medal from the Biochemical Society (2008), the GlaxoSmithKline Medal of the Royal Society (2010), the Genetics Medal (2012) and the Cancer Research UK Lifetime Achievement Award for Cancer Research (2018). Steve is a Fellow of the Royal Society, a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, an International Member of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), and an International Honorary Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He currently serves on the Council of the Royal Society.
- Open to
- Tri-Institutional