Simpson Lecture set for Sept. 30

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Wendy A. Bickmore, director of the Medical Research Council Human Genetics Unit in the Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medicine at The University of Edinburgh, will present the 2019/2020 Robert T. Simpson Memorial Lecture in Molecular Medicine at 4 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 30, in 102 Paterno Library on the Penn State University Park campus.

The free public lecture, titled “3D Chromatin Organisation in Genome Regulation and Disease,” is sponsored by the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

Bickmore studies the structure and organization of chromatin — the complex of DNA, RNA, and proteins that compose chromosomes — in a cell’s nucleus. Her group's research showed that different human chromosomes have preferred positions inside the nucleus, related to their gene content. They also addressed how genes are organized and packaged in the nucleus and how they move during the cell cycle and during development. Bickmore demonstrated that the polycomb repressive complex, a protein group, functions by compacting genetic material at specific points of a chromosome. Current research in the Bickmore laboratory focuses on how the spatial organization of the nucleus influences genome function in development and disease. 

Bickmore received her doctorate from the Medical Research Council Mammalian Genome Unit in the United Kingdom, and conducted postdoctoral research at the Medical Research Council Human Genetics Unit. She held several positions at the Medical Research Council before becoming the director of the Human Genetics Unit in 2015. She is a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization and a fellow of both the Royal Society and the Academy of Medical Sciences. From 2015 to 2018, she was the president of the Genetics Society of Great Britain and has been an editor for many scientific journals, including PLoS Genetics and Cell.

The Robert T. Simpson Lectureship honors its namesake and is made possible through donations from Simpson's family, friends, colleagues and associates. Simpson was an international leader for more than 35 years in research on chromatin — a fundamental component of chromosomes — and its role in gene regulation. Simpson was at the National Institutes of Health from 1970 until 1995, when he became the Verne M. Willaman Professor of Molecular Biology at Penn State. His addition to Penn State in 1995 is considered to have placed the University and the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the forefront of chromatin research and to have greatly enhanced Penn State's research and educational missions.