Abstract

Friday 20 March, 13:00 – 14:00

Speaker: Professor Ben Lehner, Sanger Centre

Talk Title: Mutate everything: mapping the energetic and allosteric landscapes of proteins at scale

Biography: Ben Lehner, Senior Group Leader at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, is one of the most influential geneticists of his generation. He has made fundamental discoveries about the biological consequences of mutations and how they interact to cause disease, particularly cancer. He provided the first genome-scale map of how mutations interact in animals, revealing the importance of non-additive interactions in pathology and the importance of chromatin regulators as modifiers. His work in inter-generational epigenetics showed that long-lasting trans-generational epigenetic memory of environmental change is possible. Professor Lehner has shown that mutagenesis can determine protein structures and he has developed the first general method to identify allosteric sites in proteins, which holds great promise for understanding biological regulation and drug discovery.