IIT Chemistry Nobel Prize Panel Discussion Series

Panelists:
Rong Wang, Professor of Chemistry
Nick Menhart, Associate Professor of Biology
Oscar Juarez, Assistant Professor of Biology

Moderator:
Ishaque Khan, Professor of Chemistry and Chair, Chemistry Department

All are welcome

While giving an introduction to the Nobel Prize (history, meaning, and relevance to science and society), the panelists will discuss for a general audience the 2015 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which was awarded to Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich, and Aziz Sancar “for mechanistic studies of DNA repair.”

The panelists will provide an overview of the problem addressed in this year’s prize: DNA—what it is, how it is damaged, and why it needs repair. Further, they will describe Lindahl’s hydrolysis repair/Uracil-DNA glycosylase (UNG) and Sancar’s photoproduct repair/Nucleotide excision repair (NER).