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Lessons Learned from Flies

Thu, March 10th, 2022
4:15 pm
- 5:30 pm

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This event is open to the public. In-person attendees must be masked and must present a Williams ID (purple or yellow) or a vaccination card at the door. There will also be a live stream available. Please click the link below if you wish to join the webinar. Remote attendees will be able to ask questions through the Q&A feature of the Zoom webinar.
https://williams.zoom.us/j/96924583424?pwd=RlN2RDErVUxmRXRQK0V5RFFVVnJ5QT09

About the talk: The simple fruitfly, Drosophila melanogaster, has been an essential genetic model system for understanding complex biological functions and is a useful tool for untangling mysterious molecular relationships in human disease. My lab utilizes Drosophila to explore fundamental principles of how discrete molecules and neural circuits in the brain contribute to complex behaviors and potential human neuropathies. While dopamine and serotonin are now regarded as common neurotransmitters that are associated with reward and mood in humans, these molecules and their receptors are used in flies as well, and the shared evolutionary relationships can potentially shed light on the human condition. We will also discuss new work in the lab focused on understanding the role of an evolutionarily conserved family of immune sensors, the Toll Receptors, within the nervous system. The role of these immune sensors in the nervous system is largely unknown, but we hypothesize that these receptors modulate neural activity in specific circuits that potentiate adaptive behavioral responses to illness.

Tim Lebestky grew up in Lawrence, Kansas and graduated with a B.Sc. in Genetics from the University of Kansas. Tim pursued doctoral work in the lab of Professor Utpal Banerjee at UCLA, and uncovered essential roles for the Notch signaling pathway and a novel downstream transcription factor in the differentiation of Drosophila blood cells. This work was recognized by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Institute with the Harold Weintraub Award and the AMGEN Outstanding Dissertation Award.  Tim went on to investigate neural circuits and behavior in mice and flies in the lab of David Anderson at Caltech, where he worked alongside a pioneering interdisciplinary team to develop automated behavior-tracking programs and also performed genetic screens of startle-arousal behaviors in Drosophila. This work identified a novel role for Dopamine receptors in learning and memory, hyperactivity, and persistent arousal that may be a characteristic of primitive emotional states. Tim joined the faculty at Williams College in 2011 and has brought many of his behavioral assays in flies to investigate molecular relationships associated with arousal, hyperactivity, grooming, and sleep. In his personal life, Tim has a talented artist for a wife, a mischief-maker for a daughter, a complicated relationship with craft beers, and believes that the NBA is the best professional sports league.

The Faculty Lecture Series aims to present big ideas beyond disciplinary boundaries. Organized by the faculty members of the Lecture Committee, the Faculty Lecture Series was founded in 1911 by Catherine Mariotti Pratt, the spouse of a faculty member who wanted to “relieve the tedium of long New England winters with an opportunity to hear Williams professors talk about issues that really mattered to them.” From these humble and lighthearted beginnings, the Faculty Lecture Series has grown to become an important forum for tenured professors to share their latest research with the larger intellectual community of the college.

The final talk of the 2022 series is next week:

Mar 17: Lama Nassif, “What does Your Noticing say about Your language Learning? Insights from Second Language Acquisition Research

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