Every breath you take and every move you make - understanding cellular oxygen sensing mechanisms

Professor Sir Peter Ratcliffe FRS

• 6 March 2024, 18:00 – 19:00
• Bristol-Myers Squibb Lecture Theatre

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• Event cost: Free
• Disabled access?: Yes
• Booking required: No

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Overview

The maintenance of oxygen homeostasis is a key physiological challenge, inadequate oxygen (hypoxia) being a major component of most human diseases. The lecture will trace insights into human oxygen homeostasis from the founding work of William Harvey on the circulation of the blood to the molecular elucidation of a system of oxygen sensing that functions to measure oxygen levels in cells and control adaptive responses to hypoxia. The lecture will outline how the oxygen sensitive signal is generated by a set of ‘oxygen splitting’ enzymes that modify a transcription factor (HIF) to signal for its degradation (and hence inactivation).  It will attempt to illustrate and rationalise the unexpected in biological discovery and discuss the interface of discovery science with the development of medical therapeutics.

Please Note: This lecture will NOT be recorded and is an in-person lecture only. 

Biography

Professor Sir Peter Ratcliffe works on understanding the mechanisms by which cells sense and signal hypoxia (low oxygen levels). Oxygen is of fundamental importance for most living organisms, and the maintenance of oxygen homeostasis is a central physiological challenge for all large animals. Hypoxia is an important component of many human diseases including cancer, heart disease, stroke, vascular disease, and anaemia.

In 2019, Professor Sir Peter Ratcliffe won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

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