Nicanor Austriaco

Last updated

Nicanor Austriaco

OP
Rev. Nicanor Austriaco, OP.jpg
Born
Nicanor Robles Austriaco, Jr.

(1968-11-01) November 1, 1968 (age 55)
Philippines
NationalityFilipino-American
Alma mater
Known forBiomedical ethics, theology, and the biology of aging
Scientific career
Fields Molecular biology
Institutions
Thesis UTH1 and the Genetic Control of Aging in the Yeast, Saccharomyces'  (1996)
Doctoral advisor Leonard P. Guarente

Nicanor Robles Austriaco, Jr. OP is a Filipino-American molecular biologist and Catholic priest. He is a professor of biology and professor of theology at Providence College, in Providence, Rhode Island, [1] and a research fellow at the Center for Theology, Religious Studies, and Ethics, at the University of Santo Tomas in the Philippines.

Contents

Early life and education

Austriaco attended the University of Pennsylvania where he earned a Bachelor of Science Engineering (B.S.E.), summa cum laude, in 1989. He went on to earn a PhD in biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1996, where he was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute pre-doctoral fellow in the laboratory of Professor Leonard Guarente. His doctoral research involved the characterization of the first aging genes in the budding yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae .

In 1997, after a brief fellowship at the Ludwig Institute of Cancer Research at the University College London, he entered the Order of Friars Preachers. He attended the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C., where he earned his Master of Divinity degree and Licentiate in Sacred Theology. He completed his Doctorate in Sacred Theology at the University of Fribourg in 2015. Austriaco earned an M.B.A. degree from Providence College in 2020.

Career

Since 2005, Austriaco has served on the faculty of Providence College. In the same year, he became an investigator at the Rhode Island Idea Network of Biomedical Research Excellence (RI-INBRE) Program. He is also the founding director of ThomisticEvolution.org, which seeks to promote a Catholic approach to understanding evolution in the light of faith. [2] He is co-author of a book on Thomistic evolution. [3]

In 2011, Austriaco published a book titled Biomedicine and Beatitude: an Introduction to Catholic Bioethics. [4] The book responds to questions raised in scientific and medical ethics from the perspective of the Catholic moral tradition that is grounded in a natural law and virtue ethic.

He has also spoken on numerous questions at the interface between science and religion. Most recently, he has proposed that the historicity of Adam and Eve can still be reconciled with the very best genomic science. [5]

Austriaco is currently a visiting professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Santo Tomas in the Philippines. As a fellow of the OCTA Research Team, he has been interviewed by Filipino TV channels on different aspects of COVID-19. [6]

Research

In addition to his other work and publications, Austriaco is the founder and principal investigator of the Austriaco Lab. The laboratory is located at Providence College and is primarily an undergraduate research laboratory that investigates cell death using the budding yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae , as a model organism. [7] Because of the pandemic, the lab has pivoted to developing a yeast based delivery platform for a COVID-19 vaccine that can be easily deployed in developing countries. [8]

Related Research Articles

<i>Saccharomyces cerevisiae</i> Species of yeast

Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a species of yeast. The species has been instrumental in winemaking, baking, and brewing since ancient times. It is believed to have been originally isolated from the skin of grapes. It is one of the most intensively studied eukaryotic model organisms in molecular and cell biology, much like Escherichia coli as the model bacterium. It is the microorganism behind the most common type of fermentation. S. cerevisiae cells are round to ovoid, 5–10 μm in diameter. It reproduces by budding.

<i>Schizosaccharomyces pombe</i> Species of yeast

Schizosaccharomyces pombe, also called "fission yeast", is a species of yeast used in traditional brewing and as a model organism in molecular and cell biology. It is a unicellular eukaryote, whose cells are rod-shaped. Cells typically measure 3 to 4 micrometres in diameter and 7 to 14 micrometres in length. Its genome, which is approximately 14.1 million base pairs, is estimated to contain 4,970 protein-coding genes and at least 450 non-coding RNAs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Franklin Stahl</span> American molecular biologist and geneticist

Franklin (Frank) William Stahl is an American molecular biologist and geneticist. With Matthew Meselson, Stahl conducted the famous Meselson-Stahl experiment showing that DNA is replicated by a semiconservative mechanism, meaning that each strand of the DNA serves as a template for production of a new strand.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">BioGRID</span> Biological database

The Biological General Repository for Interaction Datasets (BioGRID) is a curated biological database of protein-protein interactions, genetic interactions, chemical interactions, and post-translational modifications created in 2003 (originally referred to as simply the General Repository for Interaction Datasets by Mike Tyers, Bobby-Joe Breitkreutz, and Chris Stark at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute at Mount Sinai Hospital. It strives to provide a comprehensive curated resource for all major model organism species while attempting to remove redundancy to create a single mapping of data. Users of The BioGRID can search for their protein, chemical or publication of interest and retrieve annotation, as well as curated data as reported, by the primary literature and compiled by in house large-scale curation efforts. The BioGRID is hosted in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and Dallas, Texas, United States and is partnered with the Saccharomyces Genome Database, FlyBase, WormBase, PomBase, and the Alliance of Genome Resources. The BioGRID is funded by the NIH and CIHR. BioGRID is an observer member of the International Molecular Exchange Consortium.

The Dominican House of Studies is a Catholic institution in Washington, DC, housing both the Priory of the Immaculate Conception, a community of the Province of St. Joseph of the Order of Preachers (Dominicans), and the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception, an ecclesiastical faculty of theology.

Leonard Pershing Guarente is an American biologist best known for his research on life span extension in the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, roundworms, and mice. He is a Novartis Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

<i>Eremothecium gossypii</i> Species of fungus

Eremothecium gossypii (also known as Ashbya gossypii) is a filamentous fungus or mold closely related to yeast, but growing exclusively in a filamentous way. It was originally isolated from cotton as a pathogen causing stigmatomycosis by Ashby and Nowell in 1926. This disease affects the development of hair cells in cotton bolls and can be transmitted to citrus fruits, which thereupon dry out and collapse (dry rot disease). In the first part of the 20th century, E. gossypii and two other fungi causing stigmatomycosis (Eremothecium coryli, Aureobasidium pullulans) made it virtually impossible to grow cotton in certain regions of the subtropics, causing severe economical losses. Control of the spore-transmitting insects - cotton stainer (Dysdercus suturellus) and Antestiopsis (antestia bugs) - permitted full eradication of infections. E. gossypii was recognized as a natural overproducer of riboflavin (vitamin B2), which protects its spores against ultraviolet light. This made it an interesting organism for industries, where genetically modified strains are still used to produce this vitamin.

John C. Vidmar, O.P. is an associate professor of history at Providence College, Rhode Island where he also serves as provincial archivist and teaches history. Prior to his work at Providence, he served as associate professor, academic dean, acting president and prior teaching history for 15 years at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington D.C.

G1/S-specific cyclin Cln3 is a protein that is encoded by the CLN3 gene. The Cln3 protein is a budding yeast G1 cyclin that controls the timing of Start, the point of commitment to a mitotic cell cycle. It is an upstream regulator of the other G1 cyclins, and it is thought to be the key regulator linking cell growth to cell cycle progression. It is a 65 kD, unstable protein; like other cyclins, it functions by binding and activating cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK).

Benedict M. Ashley, O.P., was an American theologian and philosopher who had a major influence on 20th century Catholic theology and ethics in America through his writing, teaching, and consulting with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Author of 19 books, Ashley was a major exponent of the River Forest Thomism. Health Care Ethics, which he co-authored in 1975 and now in its fifth edition, continues to be a fundamental text in the field of Catholic Medical Ethics. Ashley taught at numerous institutions and was an active teacher, consultant, and author. He was a faculty member of the Institute for Advanced Physics, a physics research and educational organization reintegrating the foundational principles given directly through our senses into the heart of modern science, from 2003 till his death. He called the Institute for Advanced Physics "the first and only institution addressing this problem [the disintegration of secular and religious culture] at its core by integrating the proper philosophical depth into the heart of modern science."

Gerald Ralph Fink is an American biologist, who was Director of the Whitehead Institute at MIT from 1990–2001. He graduated from Amherst College in 1962 and received a Ph.D. from Yale University in 1965, having elucidated the histidine pathway in budding yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae. After postdoctoral study at the National Institutes of Health with Bruce Ames on the regulation of the histidine operon of Salmonella, in 1967 he joined Cornell University where he became a Professor of Genetics and pursued the study of the HIS4 region of yeast. In 1982 he became a founding member of the Whitehead Institute and Professor of Genetics at MIT. Dr. Fink was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1981, to the Institute of Medicine in 1996, and to the American Philosophical Society in 2003.

Saccharomyces eubayanus, a cryotolerant type of yeast, is most likely the parent of the lager brewing yeast, Saccharomyces pastorianus.

Saccharomyces kudriavzevii, is a species of yeast in the Saccharomyces sensu stricto complex. Its type strain is NCYC 2889T. It is used in production of alcoholic beverages, including pinot noir wine, and hybrids of it are used in beer brewing. It is isolated widely from the bark of oak trees.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fred Winston</span> American geneticist

Fred Marshall Winston is the John Emory Andrus Professor of Genetics in the Harvard Medical School Genetics Department, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1983. Research in his laboratory has focused on mechanisms of transcription and the regulation of chromatin structure in the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe. Dr. Winston served as the President of the Genetics Society of America in 2009 and has been elected to both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2009) and the National Academy of Sciences (2013).

Aerobic fermentation or aerobic glycolysis is a metabolic process by which cells metabolize sugars via fermentation in the presence of oxygen and occurs through the repression of normal respiratory metabolism. Preference of aerobic fermentation over aerobic respiration is referred to as the Crabtree effect in yeast, and is part of the Warburg effect in tumor cells. While aerobic fermentation does not produce adenosine triphosphate (ATP) in high yield, it allows proliferating cells to convert nutrients such as glucose and glutamine more efficiently into biomass by avoiding unnecessary catabolic oxidation of such nutrients into carbon dioxide, preserving carbon-carbon bonds and promoting anabolism.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph Heitman</span>

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References

  1. "Nicanor Austriaco O.P." The Department of Biology at Providence College. Retrieved 2021-01-05.
  2. "Home". Thomistic Evolution. Retrieved 2021-01-05.
  3. "Thomistic Evolution". ClunyMedia. Retrieved 2021-01-05.
  4. Austriaco, Nicanor Pier Giorgio (5 December 2011). Biomedicine and Beatitude: An Introduction to Catholic Bioethics. ISBN   978-0813218823.
  5. "Fr. Nicanor Austriaco, O.P. - Defending Adam After Darwin (FranU Bioethics Lecture Series) - YouTube". www.youtube.com. Retrieved 2021-01-05.
  6. "OCTA: COVID-19 cases sa NCR patuloy ang pagtaas". cnn. Retrieved 2021-01-05.[ dead link ]
  7. Lin, Su-Ju; Austriaco, Nicanor (2014-02-01). "Aging and cell death in the other yeasts, Schizosaccharomyces pombe and Candida albicans". FEMS Yeast Research. 14 (1): 119–135. doi: 10.1111/1567-1364.12113 . ISSN   1567-1356. PMC   4000287 . PMID   24205865.
  8. Editor, Online. "'Like Yakult': UST researcher eyes yeast to deliver oral Covid-19 vaccine" . Retrieved 2021-01-05.{{cite web}}: |last= has generic name (help)