Sir Richard J. Roberts, Nobel Laureate and Chief Scientific Officer at New England Biolabs, visited the Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology on the September 4, 2013 and delivered the first IMET Distinguished Seminar to a packed auditorium at the Columbus Center. In the talk, entitled “Bacterial methylomes”, Dr. Roberts reported on a novel approach to characterizing restriction-modification systems and DNA methylation patterns on a genome-wide basis using single molecule real time (SMRT) sequencing. The implications of his talk were far reaching in the field of biotechnology. Dr. Roberts is well-known for his discovery and characterization of over 100 restriction enzymes. He also discovered introns and mRNA splicing for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1993. The seminar was hosted by Professor Shiladitya DasSarma and co-sponsored by the University of Maryland School of Medicine’s Department of Microbiology and Immunology.

Relevant articles by Dr. Roberts:
1. The methylomes of six bacteria
2. Characterization of DNA methyltransferase specificities using single-molecule, real-time DNA Sequencing
3. Genome-wide mapping of methylated adenine residues in pathogenic Escherichia coli using single-molecule real-time sequencing