2008 Eighth Annual Beckman Scholars Symposium
Friday Concurrent Session Speaker

Scott Strobel, Ph.D.
Professor and Chair of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry
Professor of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Yale University 

RNA Enzymes and Other Molecular Coelacanths
The discovery that RNA can act as an enzyme within modern cells led to the proposal of an RNA world prior to the protein dominated world of today. Recent discoveries in RNA catalyzed splicing, protein synthesis and RNA regulatory mechanisms have shed new light on this biologically ancient macromolecule. These discoveries suggest that RNA still plays a central role in biology, well beyond that of information transfer.

Dr. Strobel is professor and chair of the Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry Department at Yale University. He also holds a joint appointment in the Chemistry Department. He received his B.A. degree in Chemistry from Brigham Young University and a Ph.D. in Biology from the California Institute of Technology where he completed his research as an HHMI predoctoral fellow in the Chemistry Department studying molecular recognition of DNA. He continued his training as an HHMI sponsored Life Science Research Foundation postdoctoral fellow at the University of Colorado at Boulder with Professor Thomas Cech, where his attention turned to RNA catalysis.

Dr. Strobel received the Beckman Young Investigator Award, the Searle Scholar Award, the Basil O-Connor Scholar Research Award, a Beginning Investigator Award from the American Cancer Society, and the Dylan Hixon Prize for Teaching Excellence in the Natural Sciences from Yale University. He was recently named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor. Dr. Strobel's research focuses on RNA catalysis including RNA splicing and protein synthesis by the ribosome.