Speaker: Tony Hunter, PhD

Topic:

"Signal Transduction in Disease and the Response to DNA Damage"

Tony Hunter is Professor and Director of the Molecular and Cell Biology Laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, and Adjunct Professor in the Division of Biological Sciences at the University of California at San Diego.  He received both his undergraduate and PhD degrees from the University of Cambridge, England, and after a period of post-graduate training joined the Salk Institute in 1975.  At that time he set out to identify tumor virus transforming gene products, and in 1979 discovered that v-Src exhibits a previously unknown protein kinase activity that phosphorylates tyrosine. He went on to show that normal cells have tyrosine kinases, including c-Src and the EGF receptor, and that tyrosine phosphorylation is important in signal transduction processes that control many aspects of normal cell growth, as well as in oncogenesis. Dr. Hunter has spent most of the last thirty years studying protein kinases and phosphatases, and the role of protein phosphorylation in cell growth, oncogenesis and the cell cycle.  His current interests are in the mechanisms of signal transduction through protein phosphorylation, ubiquitination and sumoylation events that are involved in cell proliferation and growth control, and in cell cycle checkpoint activation in response to DNA damage.  His recent work has highlighted the importance of crosstalk and feedback loops in the PI-3 kinase-Akt-mTOR cell growth pathway, has elucidated mechanisms of activation of the ATM protein kinase in response to double strand DNA breaks, and has revealed a critical role for apical aPKC localization in asymmetric division of neuronal precursors in the spinal cord. Dr. Hunter is a recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the NCI Outstanding Investigator Award, General Motors Cancer Research Foundation Mott Prize, Biochemical Society Hopkins Medal, Keio Medical Science Prize, American Cancer Society Medal of Honor, Prince of Asturias Award for Scientific and Technical Research, and the Wolf Prize in Medicine.  Dr. Hunter is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, Fellow of the Royal Society of London, an Associate Member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), and was appointed as an American Cancer Society Research Professor in 1992.
 

When:

Monday, November 8, 2006
4:00PM – 5:00PM
 

Location:

Hughes Auditorium
Robert H. Lurie Medical Research Center
303 East Superior Street, 1st floor

Wolff S, Ma H, Burch D, Maciel GA, Hunter T, Dillin A.  SMK-1, an essential regulator of DAF-16-mediated longevity. Cell. 2006 Mar 10;124(5):1039-53.

Petersen P, Chou DM, You Z, Hunter T, Walter JC, Walter G.  Protein phosphatase 2A antagonizes ATM and ATR in a Cdk2- and Cdc7-independent DNA damage checkpoint.  Mol Cell Biol. 2006 Mar;26(5):1997-2011.

Wang Z, Qi C, Krones A, Woodring P, Zhu X, Reddy JK, Evans RM, Rosenfeld MG, Hunter T.  Critical roles of the p160 transcriptional coactivators p/CIP and SRC-1 in energy balance.  Cell Metab. 2006 Feb;3(2):111-22.

Hunter T, Schulman H.  CaMKII structure--an elegant design.  Cell. 2005 Dec 2;123(5):765-7.

Kamada S, Kikkawa U, Tsujimoto Y, Hunter T.  A-kinase-anchoring protein 95 functions as a potential carrier for the nuclear translocation of active caspase 3 through an enzyme-substrate-like association.  Mol Cell Biol. 2005 Nov;25(21):9469-77.

Huang HK, Bailis JM, Leverson JD, Gomez EB, Forsburg SL, Hunter T.  Suppressors of Bir1p (Survivin) identify roles for the chromosomal passenger protein Pic1p (INCENP) and the replication initiation factor Psf2p in chromosome segregation.  Mol Cell Biol. 2005 Oct;25(20):9000-15.

Watanabe N, Arai H, Iwasaki J, Shiina M, Ogata K, Hunter T, Osada H.  Cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK) phosphorylation destabilizes somatic Wee1 via multiple pathways.  Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2005 Aug 16;102(33):11663-8. Epub 2005 Aug 5.

Wang X, Li X, Meisenhelder J, Hunter T, Yoshida S, Asami T, Chory J.  Autoregulation and homodimerization are involved in the activation of the plant steroid receptor BRI1.  Dev Cell. 2005 Jun;8(6):855-65.

You Z, Chahwan C, Bailis J, Hunter T, Russell P.  ATM activation and its recruitment to damaged DNA require binding to the C terminus of Nbs1.  Mol Cell Biol. 2005 Jul;25(13):5363-79.

Takagi Y, Masuda CA, Chang WH, Komori H, Wang D, Hunter T, Joazeiro CA, Kornberg RD.  Ubiquitin ligase activity of TFIIH and the transcriptional response to DNA damage.  Mol Cell. 2005 Apr 15;18(2):237-43.