How a Bacterium Knows When to Wake Up
Dr. Susan S. Golden, Distinguished Professor of Biology Texas A&M University

 

7:00 pm
Monday, April 21, 2008
Bowen-Thompson Student Union Theater (Room 206)
Bowling Green State University

Free and open to the public

Susan S. Golden is a Distinguished Professor of Biology and a member of the Center for Research on Biological Clocks at Texas A&M University. She received a B.A. (1978) in Biology from Mississippi University for Women and a Ph.D. (1983) in Genetics from the University of Missouri. During her graduate work she developed genetic tools for the first cyanobacterium shown to be transformable, Synechococcus elongatus (PCC 7942). As an NIH postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Robert Haselkorn at the University of Chicago, she characterized S. elongatus photosynthesis genes. She joined the Department of Biology at Texas A&M in 1986 as an Assistant Professor, where her research on light-responsive photosynthesis gene expression led to the development of bioluminescence reporting in S. elongatus. In the early 1990s she began a collaborative project with C.H. Johnson (Vanderbilt University), M. Ishiura, and T. Kondo (both at Nagoya University) that demonstrated circadian rhythms of gene expression in S. elongatus; this organism has become the premier experimental model for a prokaryotic circadian clock. Her lab uses diverse approaches to understand the molecular basis of timekeeping in S. elongatus.

Dr. Golden was honored by promotion to Distinguished Professor at Texas A&M University in 2003. She was previously a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator, an American Cancer Society Junior Faculty Research Awardee, and a recipient of Teacher/Scholar and Distinguished Achievement in Research Awards at Texas A &M. She was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology in 2000.

BGSU’s annual lecture series was created in 1998 through an endowment by Jean Pasakarnis-Buchanan, who graduated from the University in 1952 and went on to a 33-year career as a cytologist with Massachusetts General Hospital. She also taught cytology, which is the study of human cells, at Northeastern University. Buchanan received the Alumni Community Award from BGSU in 1972, and in 1987 set up a scholarship for biology or medical technology majors. Her lectureship endowment has allowed the University to bring some of the leading figures in biology and medicine to campus each year.

Dr. Golden will also present a special Biological Sciences Departmental Seminar on Tuesday April 22 at 10:00am in Life Sciences Building 112. The title of her presentation is "A Bacterial Model For How Cells Tell Time." This presentation is also free and open to the public.