Public lecture on DNA technology at NUI Galway

Public lecture on DNA technology at NUI Galway

galway.net , 6 Apr 2003

Professor John Crenshaw, emeritus professor of animal genetics at Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia will speak on DNA technology as part of NUI Galway’s Martin Ryan Institute series of Public Lectures this year. The lecture will take place at 8.00 p.m. in Room 102, on the ground floor of the Martin Ryan Institute (opposite the Quadrangle building), on Monday, 14 April, 2003. All are welcome.

Professor Crenshaw will present a layperson’s guide to recombinant DNA technology, monoclonal antibody production and its significance, transgenic organisms, cloning, stem cells and gene therapy, particularly in relation to curing human genetic diseases.

John Crenshaw has had an extraordinarily varied career. He attended the University of Georgia, obtaining a Master’s degree in 1951 on the unlikely subject of the life-cycle of the Southern Spiny Lizard. A Doctoral degree at Gainesville, Florida followed on the Florida Cooter, a turtle. Moving to eminent universities at Columbia, Missouri and Berkeley, California, he continued his population genetic studies, focusing further on reptiles. Later in his career, he developed an interest in marine invertebrates, particularly in relation to genetics of Hard Clams and Bay Scallops.

On meeting Professor Brendan Keegan, a NUI Galway marine scientist on sabbatical in Georgia, the two became firm friends. Professor Crenshaw has since been a great ally of Ireland and to NUI Galway, sponsoring several promising Irish scientists, including the current CEO of the Marine Institute, Dr Peter Heffernan, who is currently busily moving the Marine Institute to Galway. Through the University Foundation, he and his wife Nell have generously endowed a post-graduate fellowship at NUI Galway, in recognition of the warm welcome that he has always had in the west.

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