22nd Annual George Adrouny Lecture
Tuesday, April 23rd, 2024
The Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology proudly presents the 22nd Annual George Adrouny Memorial Lectureship on Tuesday, April 23rd at 10:00 a.m. This year's lecture is in the Hutchinson Memorial Gallery and Auditorium, 1430 Tulane Avenue.
The 2024 featured speaker is William C. Wimley, PhD George A. Adrouny, Ph.D. Professorship in Biochemistry Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Tulane University School of Medicine, New Orleans, Louisiana Bill Wimley grew up in Monroe, Connecticut and earned his B.S. in biophysics at the University of Connecticut in 1985. In 1990, he earned his PhD in Biochemistry at the University of Virginia, working with Professor Thomas E. Thompson. His postdoctoral work in Physiology and Biophysics was done at the University of California, Irvine, with Professor Stephen H. White. As a postdoc, Wimley published a series of influential papers describing the Wimley-White hydrophobicity scales, which remain widely used today in bioinformatics and structural biology. Bill has held a faculty position at Tulane since 1998.
Supported by NIH, NSF, the Louisiana Board of Regents, and other funding agencies, Bill Wimley’s research focuses on discovering, developing, and characterizing membrane-active peptides. Major research directions include the discovery of peptides with potent antiviral or antibacterial activity, offering new ways to treat infectious diseases, and peptide-based vehicles for drug delivery, offering new ways to treat diseases such as cancer. These discoveries are based on an interactive high-throughput approach called “synthetic molecular evolution” that Wimley developed at Tulane. Bill Wimley’s research career was initiated with a Ruth L. Kirschstein fellowship from NIH. In 1999, he co-founded the Tulane Structural Proteomics Initiative, which was awarded several large grants, and the New Orleans Protein Folding Intergroup, which met for nearly 20 years. Bill Wimley has published 125 peer-reviewed papers since his first in 1990. He is also the inventor of five US patents based on his work at Tulane. Wimley has been on the editorial boards of the Biophysical Journal, Journal of Membrane Biology, and BBA Biomembranes and currently chairs the Publications Committee of the Biophysical Society. Among his awards, Wimley was named the Oliver Fund Scholar by Tulane in 2012 and was named the inaugural winner of the Thomas E. Thompson Award in Membrane Structure and Assembly in 2013 by the Biophysical Society. In 2016, Wimley was named the George A. Adrouny Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. In 2024, he was awarded the Tulane School of Medicine Faculty Recognition Award for Research in Basic Science.
For more details, please contact Kelly Boyd at kraglan@tulane.edu
His research interests center on understanding the mechanisms and regulation of gene expression in mammalian cells. His work has been supported by many grants, including an NIH MERIT Award. He has authored or coauthored over 330 research articles and reviews on these topics, and is an ISI Highly Cited Researcher. Manley is or has been an Editor of three journals and has served on numerous editorial boards and review panels. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Dr. Manley's laboratory studies gene expression in mammalian cells. Manley and his colleagues identified and characterized the key factors responsible for polyadenylation of mRNA precursors, and elucidated how this remarkably complex machinery functions in gene regulation, for example during cell growth and differentiation. He has also studied the mechanism and regulation of the process by which introns are removed from mRNA precursors, mRNA splicing. Manley and his coworkers co-discovered the first alternative splicing factor (SR protein), characterized how this and other splicing regulatory proteins function and are themselves regulated, showed how alternative splicing can become deregulated in disease, and with respect to mechanism demonstrated that two spliceosomal small nuclear RNAs by themselves have catalytic activity. Finally, he elucidated unexpected links between these mRNA processing reactions and transcription, DNA damage signaling and maintenance of genomic stability. His work has thus provided considerable insight into the complex mechanisms that are essential for the regulated production of mRNAs in mammalian cells.
As a memorial to their late father, the distinguished former Professor of Biochemistry, George A. Adrouny, a memorial lectureship was established in 2000 by his children and family to honor his memory. The Department of Biochemistry, Tulane University Health Sciences Center, School of Medicine, is proud to host this annual event.
George A. Adrouny was born of Armenian parents in Turkey on April 2nd, 1912. He received his BA in chemistry in 1934, and a degree in pharmaceutical chemistry in 1940, both from the American University of Beirut. While working as a freelance pharmacist, he also taught chemistry and biology at Aleppo College in Aleppo, Syria. In 1951, a Smith-Mundt Fellowship permitted him to begin graduate studies at Emery University where he earned a Ph.D. in Biochemistry in 1954. After two years as a Research Associate in Biochemistry at Emory, he was recruited to the Tulane University School of Medicine, Department of Biochemistry, where he ultimately rose to the rank of full professor.
Dr. Adrouny’s research interests were diverse. His identification and characterization of the fire ant venom was published in 1959 in Science magazine. He also published papers in the areas of cardiac glycogen metabolism, intestinal dextran-hydrolyzing enzymes, biochemical effects of growth hormone and the phylogenic and evolutionary importance of hickory nut and pecan oils.
He headed the Foreign Fellows Program, specifically created for foreign graduate students studying at Tulane. He also was placed in charge of the Medical Biochemistry course, a post that he enjoyed until his retirement in 1981. In recognition of his devotion to the organization and teaching of this course, the Owl Club gave him a certificate of recognition in 1981. He was named Professor Emeritus following his retirement from the Medical School.
Dr. Adrouny was a member of the Society of Sigma Xi, the New York Academy of Sciences, the American Chemical Society and he was a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences. He was listed in the Who’s Who of American Education in 1967-68.
In 1987, a few years after the death of Alice K. Adrouny, his wife of 38 years, Dr. Adrouny moved to Maryland to be near family where he lived until his death on November 24, 1999.
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