The series of encounters entitled “The travelling Genius : Italians Art, humanities, science … in the world“, is a space for discussion and cultural dialogue that the Italian Cultural Institute has developed especially for young Italians in world. Italians who, beyond any orientation, are the bearers of knowledge accumulated in Italy and diffuse the following, even without their knowledge, a provision or a vocation of ancient origin: the generous exchange of culture, comforted by a keen sense of human comprehension.
February 22, 2018, 6pm Free Admission
Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Montreal
1200 Av. du Dr Penfield
Conference in Italian
The fruit fly Drosophila has been the object of genetic studies for over 100 years because of its short life cycle, vast collections of genetic tools, economic and easy culturing, without the need of expensive containment facilities. To date, six Nobel prizes were awarded for research performed in fly models. In fact, due to a remarkable 75% of genetic conservation between flies and humans, Drosophila research has enabled the definition of basic molecular mechanisms of human healthy and diseased processes that were too complex to study in vertebrates. In this conversation, I will share our recent progress and in establishing a first-in-kind fly model to study how genes function in polycystic kidney disease (PKD), an incurable malady affecting 66,000 Canadians and 12.5 million people world-wide.
Chiara Gamberi earned a B. Sc. In Biological Sciences with Specialization in Molecular Genetics summa cum laude at the University of Pavia with a thesis on the molecular characterization of a human pathological extra chromosome and a Ph. D. in Molecular Biology and Cellular Pathology at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Verona with a comparative study of human and yeast RNA binding proteins. Moving to the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg during her graduate studies, and then as a postdoc at the University of Texas at Austin and McGill University, CG continued to pursue her interests in RNA biology and began to study how regulation of RNA expression impacts animal development and physiological adaptation. Most recently, as Affiliate Assistant Professor of Biology at Concordia University and Visiting Professor at the Université de Montréal, CG established a first-in-kind model of polycystic kidney disease in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster to study how genes affect renal cyst formation.
Reservation no longer available