Four Yale scientists who are members of the National Academy of Sciences -- NAS -- including Nobel laureate Sidney Altman -- will speak on campus on Friday, Jan. 24, at a scientific symposium open to the public. Talks on topics ranging from genetic engineering to cyclic climate changes in the Near East will begin at 2 p.m. in Brady Auditorium, 310 Cedar St.
The symposium is being presented in conjunction with a regional meeting of the NAS to be held earlier that day. Chartered by Congress in 1863 to advise the federal government on scientific and technical matters, the academy tackles scientific issues of public interest and concern. Yale currently has 56 faculty members who have been elected to membership by their academy peers.
The symposium's organizer and moderator is Joan A. Steitz, chair and the Henry Ford II Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry. An NAS member herself, Professor Steitz also is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.
Professor Altman, who holds the Sterling Chair in biology, will speak on "An Enzyme with a Catalytic RNA Subunit: Basic and Applied Research." His discovery of RNA enzymes, or "ribozymes," which earned him the 1989 Nobel Prize in chemistry, has triggered a new branch of genetic engineering aimed at fighting lethal viruses and repairing genetic defects.
Other speakers and their topics are: