I2 Lab Distinguished Seminar Series
The Three Dimensional Structure of Viruses in Atomic Detail
Dr. Michael Rossmann
Thursday, April 5, 2007
4:00PM ~ 5:15PM, Harris Engineering Center 125
Abstract
Short Bio
Michael G. Rossmann graduated from the University of London (B.Sc. (General), 1950; B.Sc. (Special), 1951; M.Sc., 1953) and the University of Glasgow (Ph.D., 1956), after which he was a postdoctoral fellow with Prof. William Lipscomb at the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis (1956-1958) and a Research Associate with Prof. Max Perutz at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, England (1958-1964). Currently he is the Hanley Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences at Purdue University, where he has worked as a research scientist for the last 42 years. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, a foreign member of the British Royal Society, and a 2000-2006 member of the National Science Board, the oversight body for the National Science Foundation. He has received numerous international honors and has honorary degrees from universities in Canada, France, Sweden, England, and Belgium. His laboratory utilizes X-ray crystallography and electron microscopy to study biological structure of various animal and bacterial viruses at atomic resolution to determine how these molecular assemblages recognize specific hosts, tissues, or cells, how they enter the cell and disassemble, and how newly synthesized viral components assemble and mature to form progeny viruses. He has studied single-stranded RNA rhino- (common cold), coxsackie-, polio-, cardio-, and the enveloped toga- and flaviviruses; single-stranded DNA human, canine, feline, and porcine parvoviruses and the bacterial fX174 virus; and the double-stranded DNA tailed f29 and T4 bacteriophages.
