Under the leadership of METU Presidency, “METU Presidential Lecture Series” will be held throughout the 2019-2020 Academic Year, in which world-renowned and Nobel Prize-winning scientists will be present as speakers.
In the series where seperate activities are planned for university students, academicians, and for high school students; Nobel Laureate in Chemistry in 2003 Prof. Peter Agre, MD will speak as a beginning. On Saturday, October 12, 2019, Prof. Agre will give a speech at Ankara METU Development Foundation Private Schools for high school students, and on Monday, October 14, 2019, at METUCulture and Convention Center for METU graduate students and faculty, and Higher Education Board’s 100/2000 scholars. Prof. Agre’s speech will be broadcasted live from https://odtutv.metu.edu.tr/index.php.
About Prof. Peter Agre, MD
Peter Agre is an American physician and molecular biologist, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor, that he was given for his accomplishments as an interdisciplinary researcher and excellence in teaching the next generation of scholars, at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and director of the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute.
In 2003, Agre and Roderick MacKinnon shared the 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for “discoveries concerning channels in cell membranes.” Agre was recognized for his discovery of aquaporin water channels. Aquaporins are water-channel proteins that move water molecules through the cell membrane. In 2009, Agre was elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and became active in science diplomacy.
About “Aquaporins”
Moving from that every cell is primarily water, water moves through the cell rapidly and in a very organized way in tissues that have aquaporin water channels.
Called by Agre as “the plumbing system for cells”, 12 aquaporins exist in humans, and permeated by water, aquaporins are required for generation of cerebrospinal fluid, aqueous humour, tears, sweat, saliva, humidification of airways, and renal concentration.
Aquaporins exist in all life forms including invertebrates, plants, microbes, and parasites cause malaria. Long interested in diseases of the developing world, Prof. Agre and his team investigated aquaporins in malaria parasites, malaria mosquitoes, and cerebral malaria.
Information about Prof. Peter Agre, MD and his studies are taken from here.
