R. Keith Slotkin, assistant professor, molecular genetics, has been invited to give the 4th Annual Seymour Benzer Lecture, September 10, at the National Academy of Science’s headquarters in Irvine, California. His lecture, “The Host-Pathogen Arms Race: a View from the Molecular Battlefield,” springs from a 20-minute lecture delivered at the Kavli Frontiers of Science meeting in 2013 that was put on Vimeo.

The National Academy of Sciences’ annual Seymour Benzer Lecture, which covers the fields of neuroscience or genetics, was established in 2011 through a gift from biologist and 2002 Nobel Laureate Sydney Brenner in memory of his friend and colleague Seymour Benzer, one of the founders of modern behavioral genetics.

Slotkin said of being invited to give this lecture, “I am very excited about the opportunity to give this very broad and over-arching lecture to an audience of non-scientists. It is very different compared to the typical ‘science-to-specialists’ talks that I more routinely give.

“The idea of the lecture is to use the familiar analogy of political arms races that are always being talked about in the news to help the non-specialist audience understand the biological host-pathogen interaction. Arms races are conflicts between two or more parties where the goal of each side is to accumulate superior forces and weapons, resulting in a rapid escalation of technology.

“Arms races also occur between species in nature, leading to the rapid evolution of new traits and behaviors.

“On the molecular level, an arms race is playing out daily within all of our cells as we attempt to fend off viruses and pathogens.”

In his talk, Slotkin will provide examples of biologists taking advantage of molecular arms races to view evolutionary changes in fast-forward.

Additionally, he will highlight the molecular arms race that he studies, which is required to protect our genes and chromosomes from types of parasitic DNA in our own cells called transposable elements.

—Sandi Rutkowski