The Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience
The next Evenings at Whitney Lecture Series hosted by the University of Florida Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience will be October 10, 2019, at 7 p.m. with the program titled “Of Viruses That Cause Cancer, and Genes That Do Not Make Proteins”. Rolf Renne, Ph.D., Professor at the University of Florida, Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, will discuss how human viruses and specifically herpesviruses contribute to a wide range of human cancers. This free lecture will be presented at the UF Whitney Laboratory Lohman Auditorium, 9505 Ocean Shore Boulevard, in St. Augustine.
Dr. Renne will focus on Kaposi’s sarcoma-associated herpesvirus and Epstein-Barr-Virus. After first discussing the causes and world-wide distribution of these diseases, he will also focus on molecular mechanisms by which these viruses cause cancer. One major focus of research in the Renne laboratory is to figure out how a relatively recently discovered class of genes contribute to disease and cancer. He will also discuss how this new field of molecular biology is changing previous beliefs about genes and their functions.
After training in Virology at the University of Freiburg, Germany and UC Davis, Renne has studied different aspects of Kaposi’s sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV) since 1995. Renne joined the University of Florida in 2004. In 2017, he was appointed Associate Director for Basic Sciences at the UF Health Cancer Center, and in 2019 was named Henry E. Innes Endowed Professor of Cancer Research.
Left Image: KSHV replication in B cell lymphoma
