Joshua Rosenthal
The R. Omar & Evelyn Rilett Family Life Sciences Lecture Series will feature Professor Joshua Rosenthal of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
Rosenthal, a neurobiologist who studies how marine organisms adapt to the physical environment, will present “Rewriting the blueprint for the cephalopod nervous system in RNA” at 4 p.m. Thursday, April 19, in Moulton Hall, room 214.
A pre-seminar social will be at 3:30 p.m. outside Felmley Science Annex, room 133.
Rosenthal’s research focuses on developing new, genetically tractable marine model organisms and understanding how they are affected by a changing environment. His expertise is in RNA editing, a natural process by which RNA transcripts from expressed genes in a cell are edited, thereby potentially altering the proteins that the cell will produce. For the last 25 years, he has studied the genetics of cephalopods (squid, cuttlefish, and octopus found in marine habitats worldwide), specifically how RNA editing regulates the excitability of their nerve cells.
The event is co-sponsored by the Illinois State University’s School of Biological Sciences, Phi Sigma, and the Office of the Provost. Contact Sally Little at salitt2@ilstu.edu for appointments with this speaker.
