World-renowned insect geneticist to deliver lecture at Fralin Life Science Institute
The Fralin Life Science Institute will present a special lecture by insect geneticist Jean-Luc Imler entitled “Antiviral immunity in Drosophila” at 3:30 p.m. Monday, May 20, in the Fralin auditorium.
Imler is a professor of cell biology at the University of Strasbourg in Alsace, France, and a group leader at the Institut de Biologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire du C.N.R.S. Prior to this, he served as a research scientist and group leader in the Department of Gene Therapy at the biotech company Transgene. He studied molecular genetics at the University of Strasbourg and completed his postdoctoral training at the DNAX Research Institute in Palo Alto, Calif.
Imler’s research focuses on evolutionarily conserved aspects of the Drosophila immune response. His research has increased understanding of Toll receptors, which are evolutionarily conserved molecules that play key roles in resistance to infection, and anti-viral responses such as RNA interference.
His work has been published in Nature, Nature Immunology, Nature Genetics, PNAS, Immunology, and Advances in Virus Research among others, and has been cited nearly 5,000 times.
