When: 17th October 2013, 6:30pm – 7:30pm (doors open at 6pm)
Where: The Royal Society, 6-9 Carlton House Terrace, London, SW1Y 5A
£: Free. No tickets are required, seats will be allocated on a first-come-first-served basis.
What is it?
The Royal Society is hosting a free event on 17th October; the Francis Crick Lecture – Mutations: great and small.
The lecture is given by Dr Matthew Hurles who was awarded the 2013 Francis Crick Lecture for his outstanding contributions to understanding structural variation in the human genome; the mechanisms that cause this variation and its medical and evolutionary consequences.
One of the greatest surprises of human genetic research has been the degree to which healthy people vary in the number of genes in their genomes, as a result of gains and losses of large segments of DNA. Generating comprehensive maps of where these variants exist in our genomes has enabled us to identify large common genetic variants that influence our susceptibility to common diseases such as diabetes, as well as to discover large rare genetic variants that can cause a wide range of rare disorders.
Dr Hurles will discuss how his investigations of this previously under-appreciated form of genetic variation have helped to shape our current understanding of both the genetic causes of disease, and the mutation processes that edit the genome as it is passed from one generation to the next.
More info: royalsociety.org/events