Abstract: Series 118, Lecture 1
The Harvey Lectures Series 118 (2024—2025)
Lecture #1: Thursday, October 24, 2024 — Time and Location
How and Why Chromosomes Get Together During Meiosis
Abby Dernburg, PhD
Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, California
Sexual reproduction was a landmark evolutionary innovation that led to the morphological and developmental diversity of eukaryotes. This complex and messy process depends on the reciprocal events of fertilization, which brings together two parental genomes, and meiosis, which divides a diploid genome to produce haploid gametes. My lab has explored several widely conserved mechanisms that enable faithful chromosome segregation during meiosis, including homolog pairing, synapsis, and crossover regulation. In my lecture I will share some of our discoveries about the roles of the nuclear envelope as a mediator of meiotic chromosome movement and checkpoint activation. I will also speculate about the evolutionary advantages of sexual reproduction, which have never been adequately explained.