Understanding the Relationship Between Genes and Social Behavior: Lessons from the Honey Bee

Name: Understanding the Relationship Between Genes and Social Behavior: Lessons from the Honey Bee
Start: 2015-11-04T17:00:00-05:00
End: 2015-11-04T18:15:00-05:00

Wednesday November 4, 2015

About Presidential Lectures

Presidential Lectures are free public colloquia centered on four main themes: Biology, Physics, Mathematics and Computer Science, and Neuroscience and Autism Science. These curated, high-level scientific talks feature leading scientists and mathematicians and are intended to foster discourse and drive discovery among the broader NYC-area research community. We invite those interested in the topic to join us for this weekly lecture series.

The study of genes and social behavior is still a young field. In this lecture, Gene E. Robinson will discuss some of the first insights to emerge that describe the relationship between them. These include the surprisingly close relationship between brain gene expression and specific behavioral states; social regulation of brain gene expression; control of social behavior by context-dependent rewiring of brain transcriptional regulatory networks; and evolutionarily conserved genetic toolkits for social behavior that span insects, fish and mammals.

About the Speaker

Gene E. Robinson (Ph.D. 1986, Cornell University) pioneered the application of genomics to the study of social behavior and founded the Honey Bee Genome Sequencing Consortium. He is the director of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology and Swanlund Chair of Entomology at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Robinson serves on the National Institute of Mental Health Advisory Council and his honors include: Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship; Guggenheim Fellowship; National Institutes of Health Pioneer Award; Fellow, Animal Behavior Society; Fellow, Entomological Society of America, Fellow, American Academy of Arts & Sciences; and member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.