Whitehead Institute Symposium XXI
Scripts for Life: Biological Regulatory Mechanisms

October 3, 2003
Kresge Auditorium, MIT Campus, Cambridge, Massachusetts

The Whitehead Institute sincerely appreciates the underwriting support of the sponsors of the 21st annual Whitehead Symposium, Scripts for Life: Biological Regulatory Mechanisms

The human genome project has provided researchers with a growing list of genes—basically a cast of thousands of characters, running life inside the cell. But the key to understanding life, both in health and sickness, is the script that outlines how these cellular players interact, communicate, and cue each other. In healthy cells, genes and the proteins they produce interact harmoniously to carry out vital life functions. When signals are botched and genes miss their cues, the result is disease. This year’s science symposium focuses on biological regulatory mechanisms that comprise these “scripts for life.”

Program

Adrian Bird, Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell Biology
Institute of Cell and Molecular Biology, University of Edinburgh
Epigenetics

C. David Allis, Rockefeller University
Beyond the double helix: Writing and reading the histone code

Barbara Meyer, University of California, Berkeley
Regulation of X-chromosome-wide gene expression in C. elegans

Carla Shatz, Harvard Medical School
Immune genes and brain waves in brain wiring

Thomas Jessell, Columbia University
Motor and sensory neuron specification

Ronald Evans, Salk Institute for Biological Studies
Nuclear receptors and the complex journey to obesity

Pernille Rorth, EMBL, Heidelberg
Induction and guidance of cell migration

Ronald Breaker, Yale University
Riboswitches: Genetic control in ancient and modern biology

Victor Ambros, Dartmouth Medical School
Roles for small noncoding RNAs in animal development

Last updated October 3, 2004.