Leading Researcher In Cell Communication to Speak At UB

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- David L Garbers, Ph.D., professor of pharmacology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and a leading researcher into the mechanisms cells use to communicate with each other, will be the speaker at two distinguished lecture series during a three-day visit to the University at Buffalo on Dec. 4-6.

Garbers, holder of the Patrick E. Haggerty Distinguished Chair in Basic Biomedical Science at the University of Texas Southwestern, studies how sea urchin or mammalian spermatozoa detect chemical signals from the egg. He discovered the atrial natriuretic peptide receptor guanylyl cyclase.

Garbers will lecture at 4 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 5, in 114 Hochstetter Hall on the UB North (Amherst) Campus as part of the Department of Biological Sciences Distinguished Speaker Series. He will discuss "The Guanylyl Cyclase Receptors: No Longer Playing Second Fiddle?"

The lecture will be co-sponsored by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Undergraduate Biological Sciences Educational Program, for whom Garbers will present a special instructional lecture on Dec. 4.

Garbers also will be guest speaker at the Distinguished Scientist Seminar Series sponsored by the departments of Anatomy and Cell Biology, Biochemistry, Biophysics, Microbiology, Neurology, Pharmacology and Toxicology, and Physiology. The topic for that lecture, which will begin at 3 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 6, in Butler Auditorium of Farber Hall on the UB South (Main Street) Campus, will be "Diverse Functions of Members of the Guanylyl Cyclase Receptor Family."

Garbers' research applies also to the nonreproductive or somatic cells in mammals, which serve as receptors for molecules that regulate blood pressure and a large number of other physiological processes. Cell surface receptors found in sea urchin sperm also have been found in humans and other mammals.

Both lectures are open to the public.