Contact: Sammy McDavid
STARKVILLE, Miss.--An international authority on the molecular machinery and mechanism of cell secretion will inaugurate a special lecture series Friday [Nov. 4] at Mississippi State University.
Bhanu P. Jena of Wayne State University's School of Medicine will be featured at the first Sir Aaron Klug Distinguished Award Lecture. Sponsored by MSU's biological sciences department, the public program begins at 3:30 p.m. in 119 Harned Hall.
Jena, a native of India, is the George E. Palade University Professor and Distinguished Professor of Physiology at WSU. He is a doctoral graduate of Iowa State University.
The new campus lecture series is named for the British chemist who received the 1982 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his investigations of the three-dimensional structure of viruses and other particles that are the combinations of nucleic acids and proteins. The Nobel committee also honored Klug's development of crystallographic electron microscopy.
"This award lecture has been established in his honor to recognize Dr. Klug's pioneering discoveries in molecular structure-function," said department head Nara Gavini.
Jena, director of the WSU medical school's Institute of NanoBioScience, was selected as the first Klug lecturer in recognition of his own pioneering discoveries in the research areas he will be discussing, Gavini added.
For more information on the program, contact Gavini at (662) 325-7573 or gavini@biology.msstate.edu.