Community Talk and Social: The Promise of Chemical Ecology

The Hitchcock Center for Chemical Ecology Symposium is pleased to open its final talk to the public! Join us for Dr. Paul Alan Cox's talk on "The Promise of Chemical Ecology"!

Tahoe Center for Environmental Sciences - Room 139/141

Although it is often claimed that mathematics is the language of science, on this planet millions of different species of organisms communicate with each other primarily through chemistry. Plants, which are typically sessile, cannot flee their predators. Instead, they protect themselves through chemical compounds that deter, dissuade, or disorient animals that seek to eat them. Caffeine, nicotine, and even hallucinogens like mescaline evolved as chemical warfare agents by plants against their fungal, insect, and vertebrate enemies. Many such compounds, at the right dose, have led to new medicines. Approximately one-fourth of all pharmaceuticals contain or are modeled after a naturally occurring plant compound.

Similarly, venoms such as those contained in the saliva of Gila monsters or the sting of deadly scorpions, have led to major advances in the treatment of diabetes or brain tumors respectively. The potentially fatal toxins of cone shells from the ocean have been developed as major non-opiate painkillers.

New pharmaceuticals for the treatment of Alzheimer’s, ALS, and Parkinson’s disease are emerging from studies of cyanobacterial toxins that contaminate traditional food supplies in remote island villages. Particularly promising are dietary studies of “blue zones” where residents live to over 100 years old in complete health and mental acuity.

Interdisciplinary research at the University of Nevada, Reno promises to refine chemical ecology as a major new discipline that can address some of the most pressing technological, medical, and social needs of humanity.

After the talk, please join us for the HCCE Symposium Social featuring a performance by the band Wild Ginger! Food and drink will be available for purchase.

Dr. Paul Alan Cox has lived for years in remote island villages searching for new medicines. He was named one of TIME magazine’s eleven “Heroes of Medicine” for his discovery of a new HIV/AIDS drug candidate. He was also awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize, sometimes known as the Nobel Prize of the Environment. Seacology, the island conservation not-for-profit he founded, has set aside over 1.5 million acres of rain forest and coral reef in 70 countries around the world by building over 430 schools, medical clinics, and water supplies for island villages.

Cox was both a Danforth Fellow and a National Science Foundation Fellow at Harvard where he received his Ph.D. He was then appointed as a Miller Fellow at the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science at the University of California, Berkeley. After serving as professor and dean at Brigham Young University he became the first King Carl XVI Gustaf Professor of Environmental Science in Sweden. He serves as the Executive Director of the Brain Chemistry Labs in Jackson, Wyoming, where he and his colleagues are searching for new treatments for ALS and Alzheimer’s disease.