The inaugural lecture of Professor Jo Morris – The emergency response to DNA-damage; BRCA1, SUMO and other firefighters

You are invited to attend the inaugural lecture of Professor Jo Morris of the Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences.

Poor repair of damaged DNA can lead to cancer development. Jo Morris, Professor of Molecular Genetics, will tell the story of how our cells launch rescue responses to repair DNA and how we can use this understanding to improve cancer therapies.

DNA is a surprisingly vulnerable molecule. It is prone to being wrecked by what we do it; think of sunburn and smoking. DNA also gets miscopied every time a cell divides and is even attacked everyday by water. Our DNA is like a library of recipes of how to make a cell. It determines how our cells behave and ultimately how an organism is put together and functions. DNA damage is potentially fatal to the cell or worse damage can result in mutations and the development of cancer. 

The story of how most of the time most of our 37 trillion cells don’t die or become cancers is an amazing one. It involves the rapid deployment of intra-cellular blue flashing lights that recruit emergency responses to the damaged DNA and the spraying of special super-glue to hold that response in place. The importance of this process is clear since inherited breast and ovarian cancer syndromes occur when the emergency response is broken. Professor Morris will highlight how certain DNA-repair genes function to protect our DNA from damage and us from cancer.