# Mendel Lectures

The Mendel Lectures is a series of lectures given by the world's top scientists in genetics, molecular biology, biochemistry, microbiology, medicine and related areas which has been held in the refectory of the Augustian Abbey of St. Thomas in Brno, Czech Republic since May 2003. The lectures were established to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) by James Watson (1928) and Francis Crick (1916-2004). The Mendel Lectures are named in honour of Gregor Johann Mendel (1822-1884), the founder of genetics, who lived and worked in the Augustinian Abbey in Brno 1843-1884. Based on his experiments conducted in the abbey between 1856 and 1863, Mendel established the basic rules of heredity, now referred to as the laws of Mendelian inheritance. The Mendel Lectures are organized by the Masaryk University, the Mendel Museum, and the St. Anne's University Hospital Brno. The twentieth season of the Mendel Lectures is running at present. More than 130 top scientists, including many Nobel Prize winners, have visited Brno to give a Mendel Lecture, for example Tim Hunt, Jack W. Szostak, John Gurdon, Elizabeth Blackburn, Paul Nurse, Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Günter Blobel, Kurt Wüthrich, Jules A. Hoffmann, Aaron Ciechanover, Ada Yonath, Paul Modrich, Eric F. Wieschaus, Fraser Stoddart, Ben Feringa, Brian K. Kobilka and others.

## History

The first idea of the Mendel Lectures occurred during the international conference ´EMBO Workshop: Genetics after the Genome´ organised by Dieter Schweizer and Kim Nasmyth in 2002. Kim Nasmyth, at the time director of the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology, and his wife Anna Nasmyth, Imma Mautner Markhof from Austria, Jan Motlík of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and Jiřina Relichová of the Masaryk University prepared and organized the very first series of Mendel Lectures. They named the series „The Road to the DNA“ and focused the lectures on the historical context of genetics. The two first speakers, Sir Walter Bodmer from Oxford and Charles Weissmann from London, gave their talks in the Augustinian Abbey in Old Brno on May 13, 2003. Subsequent series have addressed more topical scientific findings. Since 2003, more than 130 top scientists, including many Nobel Prize winners, have visited Brno to give a Mendel Lecture.
The Mendel Lectures are also connected with the establishment of the Mendel Museum and revitalization of scientific activities in the Augustinian Abbey in Old Brno in 2003 in the event of the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). The British Council donated a copy of the original photograph of James Watson and Francis Crick and a copy of their model of DNA from 1953 is on loan from Gustav Ammerer to the Mendel Museum.
Initially, the Mendel Lectures were financially supported by the geneticist Gustav Ammerer from Vienna through his charity Vereinigung zur Förderung der Genomforschung, by the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and by the British Council. Realization of the Mendel Lectures have been also supported by the Masaryk University, Authority of the South Moravian Region, the City of Brno, and the IMP Vienna. Between 2012 and 2014 the lectures were funded by the grant of the Czech Ministry of Education and the European Union (project Pluricell). Since 2015, the Mendel Lectures are supported by the International Clinical Research Center of St. Anne's University Hospital Brno and its project ICRC. From 2016 Masaryk University established Seminar Series and contributes with an essential financial funding.

## Present

The Mendel Lectures are now mainly focused on combining cutting-edge interdisciplinary approaches, technologies and methods of biochemistry, biophysics, molecular biology, computational modelling, imaging, microbiology, cell biology, physiology, genetics, toxicology, developmental biology, evolutionary biology and medicine.
The program of the Mendel Lectures is prepared by a scientific committee composed of Aaron Ciechanover, Simon Boulton, Kim Nasmyth, Lumír Krejčí and Vít Bryja. The Mendel Lectures are now organized by Lumír Krejčí, Kamil Paruch and Gabriela Pavlíková from the Masaryk University.

## List of speakers

| Series | Nr. | Date | Speaker | Institution | Lecture title | Nobel |
| 1 | 1 | May 13, 2003 | Sir Walter Bodmer | Institute of Molecular Medicine, Oxford, UK | "The human genome: Past, present & future" | |
| 1 | 2 | May 13, 2003 | Charles Weissmann | Institute of Neurology, London, UK | "The role of DNA in prion diseases" | |
| 1 | 3 | June 5, 2003 | Horace Judson | George Washington University, USA | "Before the structure: The roots of the evolution in biology" | |
| 1 | 4 | September 29, 2003 | Sir Tim Hunt | Cancer Research UK, Clare Hall Laboratories, UK | "Cells and their division" | Nobel prize 2001 |
| 1 | 5 | October 16, 2003 | Sir David Hopwood | John Innes Centre, Norwich, UK | "Fifty years of Streptomyces genetics: Implications for antibiotic discovery" | |
| 1 | 6 | October 30, 2003 | Anne McLaren | The Wellcome Trust / Cancer Research UK, Cambridge, UK | "Mendel and Michurin today" | |
| 1 | 7 | November 11, 2003 | Emil Paleček | Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Brno | "DNA double helix in Czechoslovakia. Electrochemical DNA sensors" | |
| 1 | 8 | November 11, 2003 | Georgii Georgiev | Institute of Gene Biology, Moscow, Russia | "Some achievements of Russian molecuar genetics between double helix and human genome" | |
| 1 | 9 | December 9, 2003 | François Gros | Académie des Sciences, Paris, France | "From the double helix to genomics and beyond" | |
| 2 | 10 | October 7, 2004 | Edward Trifonov | University of Haifa, Israel | "The nature and organisation of genomes, their sequence structure and evolution" | |
| 2 | 11 | October 21, 2004 | Jack W. Szostak | Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Boston, USA | "The origin of life and the emergence of Darwinian evolution" | Nobel prize 2009 |
| 2 | 12 | November 18, 2004 | Barry Dickson | Research Institute of Molecular Pathology, Vienna, Austria | "Wired for sex: How reproductive behaviours are programmed into a fly’s brain" | |
| 2 | 13 | March 17, 2005 | Ernst Hafen | University of Zurich, Switzerland | "Genetic dissection of insulin signalling and growth in drosophila" | |
| 2 | 14 | April 20, 2005 | Marc-André Sirard | Université Laval, Quebec, Canada | "Gene expression in bovine oocytes and embryos: Prospect and challenges" | |
| 2 | 15 | May 5, 2005 | Sir Alec Jeffreys | University of Leicester, UK | "Genetic fingerprinting and beyond" | |
| 3 | 16 | October 3, 2005 | Steven McKnight | University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, USA | "Schizophrenia, stem cells and sprouty signaling" | |
| 3 | 17 | November 10, 2005 | Kim Nasmyth | Research Institute of Molecular Pathology, Vienna, Austria | "Molecules behind Mendel’s laws of heredity: How cohesin holds sister DNAs together during mitosis and meiosis" | |
| 3 | 18 | March 30, 2006 | Richard Henderson | MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK | | |
| 3 | 19 | April 6, 2006 | Jiri Bartek | Danish Cancer Society, Copenhagen, Denmark | "DNA damage response: Molecular mechanisms and relevance for cancer" | |
| 3 | 20 | April 20, 2006 | Václav Pačes | Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Prague | "On the origin of life on Earth" | |
| 3 | 21 | May 4, 2006 | Susan Lindquist | MIT, Cambridge, USA / Whitehead Institute / HHMI | "Prion proteins and new paradigm epigenetics" | |
| 3 | 22 | May 18, 2006 | Adrian Bird | Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell Biology, University of Edinburgh, UK | "Proteins that read DNA methylaton signal" | |
| 4 | 23 | October 12, 2006 | John Gurdon | Wellcome/CRC Institute, University of Cambridge, UK | "Nuclear reprogramming as a route to cell replacement" | Nobel Prize 2012 |
| 4 | 24 | October 26, 2006 | Ronald Plasterk | Netherlands Institute for Developmental Biology, Utrecht | "miRNAs for animal development" | |
| 4 | 25 | October 31, 2006 | Elizabeth Blackburn | University of California, San Francisco, USA | "Responses of cells and organisms to altered telomere maintenance" | Nobel Prize 2009 |
| 4 | 26 | November 9, 2006 | Rodney Rothstein | Columbia University, New York, USA | "Choreography of the DNA damage response in budding yeast" |
| 4 | 27 | April 19, 2007 | Wilhelm Ansorge | ETH Zurich, Switzerland | "Genomes, proteomes and single cell analysis" | |
| 4 | 28 | April 26, 2007 | Richard Losick | Harvard University, Boston, USA | "Surprises in how microbes cope with uncertainty" | |
| 4 | 29 | May 10, 2007 | Jan Ellenberg | EMBO, Heidelberg, Germany | "Imaging how living cells divide: From single proteins to genome wide screening" | |
| 5 | 30 | October 2, 2007 | Titia de Lange | Rockefeller University, New York, USA | "How telomeres deal with the DNA damage response" | |
| 5 | 31 | November 8, 2007 | Walter Jakob Gehring | University of Basel, Switzerland | "The master control gene of eye development and the evolution of light reception" | |
| 5 | 32 | November 29, 2007 | Svante Pääbo | Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany | "Of humans, neanderthals and apes" | Nobel prize 2022 |
| 5 | 33 | March 6, 2008 | Elliot Meyerowitz | California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, USA | "Plant stem cells: Live imaging and computational models of the Arabidopsis shoot apical meristem" | |
| 5 | 34 | April 10, 2008 | Stephen Craig West | Cancer Research UK, Clare Hall Laboratories, UK | "DNA strand-break repair and relationship to human disease" | |
| 5 | 35 | April 17, 2008 | Richard M. Durbin | Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Cambridge, UK | "Sequencing hundreds of human genomes" | |
| 5 | 36 | May 5, 2008 | Sir Paul Nurse | Rockefeller University, New York, USA | "The great ideas of biology" | Nobel Prize 2001 |
| 6 | 37 | October 9, 2008 | Jan-Michael Peters | Research Institute of Molecular Pathology, Vienna, Austria | "How cohesin controls sister chromatid cohesion and transcription" | |
| 6 | 38 | November 20, 2008 | Andrea Musacchio | FIRC Institute of Molecular Oncology Foundation / European Institute of Oncology, Milan, Italy | "Molecular bases of chromosome segregation" | |
| 6 | 39 | March 29, 2009 | Jonas Frisén | Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden | "New neurons in old brains" | |
| 6 | 40 | May 7, 2009 | Sir Venkatraman Ramakrishnan | MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK | "What structures of the ribosome have revealed about its central role in translating genetic information" | Nobel Prize 2009 |
| 6 | 41 | May 14, 2009 | Frances Ashcroft | University of Oxford, UK | "Neonatal diabetes: From ion channel to disease" | |
| 6 | 42 | May 21, 2009 | Walter Keller [de] | University of Basel, Switzerland | "3´end processing of messenger RNA precursors and RNA quality control" | |
| 7 | 43 | October 15, 2009 | Meinrad Busslinger | Research Institute of Molecular Pathology, Vienna, Austria | "Lineage commitment and developmental plasticity of lymphocytes" | |
| 7 | 44 | October 22, 2009 | Jason Chin | The Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK | "New genetic codes" | |
| 7 | 45 | November 23, 2009 | James E. Haber | Brandeis University, Waltham, USA | "Multiple mechanisms to repair a broken chromosome" | |
| 7 | 46 | April 29, 2010 | Azim Surani | Gurdon Institute, Cambridge, UK | "Germ cell specification in mice" | |
| 7 | 47 | May 13, 2010 | Kai Simons | Max-Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden, Germany | "Cell membrane organisation and lipid rafts" | |
| 7 | 48 | May 27, 2010 | Ueli Schibler | University of Geneva, Switzerland | "Circadian gene expression in mammals: How does the brain talk to the body?" | |
| 8 | 49 | October 21, 2010 | Michael N. Hall | University of Basel, Switzerland | "TOR signaling in growth and metabolism" | |
| 8 | 50 | November 4, 2010 | Iain Campbell | University of Oxford, UK | "Cell migration and protein-protein interactions" | |
| 8 | 51 | April 7, 2011 | Linda Partridge | University College London, UK | "The new biology of ageing" | |
| 8 | 52 | April 14, 2011 | David John Sherratt | University of Oxford, UK | "A passion for DNA" | |
| 8 | 53 | May 5, 2011 | Steven Henikoff | Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, USA | "Histone variant dynamics and epigenetics" | |
| 8 | 54 | May 12, 2011 | Hans Clevers | Netherlands Institute of Developmental Biology, Utrecht, Netherlands | "Wnt signaling, Lgr5 stem cells and cancer" | |
| 8 | 55 | May 26, 2011 | Jeffery Errington | Newcastle University, UK | "L-form bacteria and the origins of life" | |
| 9 | 56 | October 6, 2011 | John Diffley | Cancer Research UK, London, UK | "How Mendel's genes are copied" | |
| 9 | 57 | October 13, 2011 | Timothy John Mitchison | Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA | "How does a large cell find its center?" |
| 9 | 58 | November 10, 2011 | Jürgen Knoblich | Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA), Vienna, Austria | "Proliferation control and tumorigenesis in stem cell lineages of the nervous system: Lessons from Drosophila and mouse genetics" | |
| 9 | 59 | March 8, 2012 | Angelika Amon | MIT, Cambridge, USA | "Causes and consequences of aneuploidy" | |
| 9 | 60 | March 22, 2012 | Anthony A. Hyman | Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden, Germany | "Cytoplasmic organization through phase transitions" | |
| 9 | 61 | April 19, 2012 | Roland Kanaar | Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, Netherlands | "How DNA recombination maintains genome integrity" | |
| 9 | 62 | May 10, 2012 | Óscar Fernández-Capetillo | Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), Madrid, Spain | "Exploring the role of replicative stress in cancer and ageing" | |
| 9 | 63 | May 24, 2012 | Douglas E. Koshland | University of California, Berkeley, USA | "Preventing chromosomes from going rogue" | |
| 10 | 64 | October 8, 2012 | Gary Ruvkun | Simches Research Center, Boston, USA | "An animal surveillance pathway for microbial inhibition of conserved cellular components and induction of defense responses" | |
| 10 | 65 | October 8, 2012 | Josef Jiricny | University of Zurich, Switzerland | "FAN 1, a novel enzyme involved in the processing of cisplatin adducts in DNA" | |
| 10 | 66 | October 8, 2012 | Jan Hoeijmakers | Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, Netherlands | "DNA, the key molecule in cancer and ageing" | |
| 10 | 67 | October 8, 2012 | Jiri Lukas | Danish Cancer Society, Copenhagen, Denmark | "Spatial and temporal organization of genome maintenance" | |
| 10 | 68 | October 9, 2012 | Günter Blobel | Rockefeller University, New York, USA | "Molecular design of nature´s largest and most versatile channel anchored in the center of the nuclear pore" | Nobel Prize 1999 |
| 10 | 69 | October 9, 2012 | Julius Lukes | Biology Centre, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic Ceske Budejovice | "RNA editing in trypanosomatid protists" | |
| 10 | 70 | October 9, 2012 | Jiri Friml | Flanders Institute for Biotechnology, Ghent, Belgium | "How cells make a plant: Role for directional auxin transport" | |
| 10 | 71 | October 25, 2012 | Nancy Kleckner | Harvard University, Cambridge, USA | "Meiotic recombination: The exception to, and the executor of, Mendel's laws" | |
| 10 | 72 | March 14, 2013 | Brenda S. Schulman | St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, USA | "Twists and turns in ubiquitin conjugation cascades" | |
| 10 | 73 | April 11, 2013 | Tom Rapoport | Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA | "How the ER gets into shape" | |
| 10 | 74 | April 18, 2013 | Torben Heick Jensen | Aarhus University, Denmark | "Making and breaking RNA in human nuclei" | |
| 10 | 75 | May 2, 2013 | Simon Boulton | Cancer Research UK, South Mimms, UK | "Genome stability and the control of recombination" | |
| 10 | 76 | May 9, 2013 | Peter Walter | HHMI / University of California, San Francisco, USA | "The unfolded protein response in health and disease" | |
| 10 | 77 | May 16, 2013 | Stanislas Leibler | Rockefeller University, New York, USA | "Following in Mendel's footsteps: Statistical analysis of microbial behavioral phenotypes" | |
| 11 | 78 | October 17, 2013 | Peter Baumann | Stowers Institute for Medical Research, Kansas City, USA | "Biogenesis and regulation of telomerase" | |
| 11 | 79 | October 24, 2013 | Carlos Bustamante | University of California, Berkeley, USA | "Grabbing the cat by the tail: How a viral molecular motor packages DNA" | |
| 11 | 80 | November 21, 2013 | Kay Hofmann | University of Cologne, Germany | "A common evolutionary basis for cell death pathways in animals, plants and fungi" | |
| 11 | 81 | May 22, 2014 | Joan Massagué Solé | Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, USA | "Origins of metastatic traits" | |
| 12 | 82 | October 30, 2014 | Lorraine S. Symington | Columbia University Medical Center, New York, USA | "Mechanisms of homologous recombination" | |
| 12 | 83 | March 5, 2015 | Herbert Waldmann | Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology, Dortmund, Germany | "Biology oriented synthesis" | |
| 12 | 84 | March 19, 2015 | Kurt Wüthrich | ETH Zurich, Switzerland | "The colorful postgenomic world of proteins" | Nobel Prize 2002 |
| 12 | 85 | April 2, 2015 | Xiaoliang Sunney Xie | Harvard University, Cambridge, USA | "Life at the single molecule level: Single cell genomics" | |
| 12 | 86 | April 9, 2015 | Michael Rosbash | Brandeis University, Waltham, USA | "Biological time travels: Old and new circadian rhythm tales" | Nobel Prize 2017 |
| 12 | 87 | May 21, 2015 | Jules A. Hoffmann | University of Strasbourg, France | "Innate immunity: From flies to humans" | Nobel Prize 2011 |
| 12 | 88 | May 28, 2015 | Maria Jasin | Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, USA | "Protecting the genome by homologous recombination" | |
| 13 | 89 | October 1, 2015 | Masaru Okabe | Osaka University, Japan | "The first “Green mice” and the mechanism of mammalian fertilization revised by gene-manipulated animals" | |
| 13 | 90 | October 22, 2015 | Aaron Ciechanover | Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel | "The ubiquitin proteolytic system: From basic mechanisms thru human diseases and on to drug targeting" | Nobel Prize 2004 |
| 13 | 91 | November 12, 2015 | Michael G. Rosenfeld | HHMI / University of California, San Diego, USA / University of Rochester, USA | "Mendel's messengers: Enhancers and transcriptional programs" | |
| 13 | 92 | March 3, 2016 | Michael G. Rossmann | Purdue University, West Lafayette, USA | "A personal history of structural virology" | |
| 13 | 93 | April 7, 2016 | Steve Jackson | Gurdon Institute, University of Cambridge, UK | "Harnessing genetic principals to treat human disease" | |
| 13 | 94 | May 5, 2016 | Joan A. Steitz | HHMI / Yale University, New Haven, USA | "Viral and cellular noncoding RNAs: Insight into evolution" | |
| 13 | 95 | May 19, 2016 | Stephen J. Benkovic | Pennsylvania State University, USA | "On de novo purine biosynthesis: The purinosome" | |
| 14 | 96 | September 22, 2016 | Wolfgang Baumeister | Department of Molecular Structural Biology, Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Martinsried, Germany | "The Molecular Machinery of Intracellular Protein Degradation: Structural Studies ex situ and in situ" | |
| 14 | 97 | November 10, 2016 | Austin Smith | Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge / Wellcome–MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute, UK | "Design Principles of Pluripotency" | |
| 14 | 98 | March 2, 2017 | Ada Yonath | Department of Structural Biology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel | "The Genetic Apparatus, from Mendel to Critical Issues in Contemporary Medicine" | Nobel Prize 2009 |
| 14 | 99 | March 16, 2017 | Peter Donnelly | Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford / Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics, UK | "Meiosis, Recombination and the Origin of a Species" | |
| 14 | 100 | March 23, 2017 | Friedhelm Hildebrandt | Harvard Medical School / Boston Children's Hospital / Howard Hughes Medical Institute, USA | "Chronic Kidney Disease: The Mendelian Surprise" | |
| 14 | 101 | April 20, 2017 | David Tollervey | Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell Biology, University of Edinburgh, UK | "Lighting up RNA Interactions in Living Cells" | |
| 14 | 102 | May 18, 2017 | Paul Modrich | Department of Biochemistry, Duke University Medical Center / Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Durham, USA | "Mechanisms in DNA Mismatch Repair" | Nobel Prize 2015 |
| 15 | 103 | October 12, 2017 | Erich Nigg | University of Basel, Switzerland | "Cell Cycle Control of Chromosome Segregation: Focus on Kinetochores and Centrosomes" | |
| 15 | 104 | October 19, 2017 | Shizuo Akira | Osaka University, Japan | "Toward Understanding the Mechanism of Fibrosis" | |
| 15 | 105 | December 14, 2017 | Gregory Hannon | Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, University of Cambridge, UK | "A Small RNA-based Innate Immune System Guards the Integrity of Germ Cell Genomes" | |
| 15 | 106 | March 8, 2018 | Elena Conti | Max-Planck-Institut für Biochemie, Germany | "The RNA Exosome-Ribosome Connection: Coupling Synthesis to Degradation" | |
| 15 | 107 | April 19, 2018 | Tom Misteli | National Cancer Institute, NIH, Bethesda, USA | "The Cell Biology of the Genome" | |
| 15 | 108 | May 3, 2018 | Mark Ptashne | Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, USA | "The Logic Of Gene Regulation" | |
| 15 | 109 | May 17, 2018 | Steven Benner | Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution, Alachua, USA | "Artificial Genetics and Evolution in the New Millennium" | |
| 16 | 110 | October 4, 2018 | Eric F. Wieschaus | Howard Hughes Medical Institute / Department of Molecular Biology, Princeton University, USA | "Genes and the Mechanics of Cell Shape" | Nobel Prize 1995 |
| 16 | 111 | October 11, 2018 | Rudolf Jaenisch | Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, MIT, Cambridge, USA | "Epigenetic Regulation in Development, Aging and Disease States" | |
| 16 | 112 | October 18, 2018 | Patrick Sung | Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, Yale University, USA | "Mechanism of Homology-directed Chromosome Damage Repair in Eukaryotes" | |
| 16 | 113 | March 14, 2019 | Richard J. Davidson | Center for Healthy Minds, University of Wisconsin–Madison, USA | "Well-being Is a Skill: Perspectives From Affective and Contemplative Neuroscience" | |
| 16 | 114 | March 21, 2019 | Emmanuelle Charpentier | Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, Berlin, Germany | "CRISPR-Cas9: a Bacterial Immune System Repurposed as a Transformative Genome Engineering Technology" | Nobel Prize 2020 |
| 16 | 115 | May 2, 2019 | Manolis Kellis | Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Lab and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, USA | "From Genomics To Therapeutics: Uncovering And Manipulating The Genetic Circuitry of Human Disease" | |
| 16 | 116 | May 16, 2019 | Fraser Stoddart | Department of Chemistry, Northwestern University, Evanston, USA | "The Rise and Promise of Artificial Molecular Machines Based on the Mechanical Bond" | Nobel Prize 2016 |
| 16 | 117 | May 23, 2019 | Andrew G. Myers | Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA | "Progress Toward the Discovery of New Antibiotics with Efficacy Against Multi-drug Resistant Bacterial Pathogens" | |
| 16 | 118 | May 30, 2019 | Roel Nusse | Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Department of Developmental Biology, Stanford University, School of Medicine, Stanford, USA | "Wnt Signaling and the Generation of New Cells in the Liver" | |
| 17 | 119 | October 3, 2019 | Stefan Knapp | SGC Frankfurt, Germany | "Challenges of selective targeting of protein kinases in cellular environments" | |
| 17 | 120 | November 7, 2019 | Andrés Aguilera | Department of Molecular Biology, University of Sevilla, Spain | "RNA-mediated chromatin regulation" | |
| 17 | 121 | November 14, 2019 | Caroline Dean | John Innes Centre Norwich, UK | "Antisense-mediated chromatin regulation" | |
| 17 | 122 | November 21, 2019 | Gerald P. Schatten | McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, USA | "Would Gregor Mendel be alarmed that designer babies walk among us?" | |
| 17 | 123 | March 5, 2020 | Adrian Krainer | Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Watson School of Biological Sciences, USA | "From Base Pairs to Bedside: Antisense Therapeutics for Targeted Modulation of Splicing or NMD" | |
| 18 | 124 | September 16, 2021 | Andrew deMello | ETH Zurich, Switzerland | "Rise of the Micromachines: Biology on the Small Scale" | |
| 18 | 125 | November 18, 2021 | Marek Mlodzik | Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, USA | "Wnt/Frizzled Planar Cell Polarity signaling in development and disease" | |
| 18 | 126 | March 17, 2022 | Ben Feringa | University of Groningen, Netherlands | "The Art of Building Small" | Nobel Prize 2016 |
| 19 | 127 | October 13, 2022 | Klaus Rajewsky | Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine, Berlin, Germany | Role of the Antigen Receptor in Normal and Malignant B Cell Development | |
| 19 | 128 | October 20, 2022 | Matthias Hentze | European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), Heidelberg, Germany | Exploring the Underground of the RBP World: Riboregulation | |
| 19 | 129 | November 3, 2022 | Kimoon Kim | Pohang University of Science and Technology, South Korea) | Supramolecular Latch: a New Chemical Tool for Chemistry, Biology and Materials Science | |
| 19 | 130 | March 2, 2023 | Walter Salzburger | University of Basel, Switzerland | The non-gradual nature of explosive diversification in African cichlid fishes | |
| 19 | 131 | March 23, 2023 | Dirk Inzé | VIB-UGent Center for Plant Systems Biology, Ghent University, Belgium | Engineering complex agronomic traits in crops | |
| 19 | 132 | May 4, 2023 | Brian K. Kobilka | Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA | Structural insights into G protein coupled receptor activation | Nobel Prize 2012 |
| 19 | 133 | May 18, 2023 | John T. Lis | Cornell University, USA | Architecture and mechanistic interplay of promoters and enhancers in controlling gene expression | |
| 20 | 134 | October 12, 2023 | Susumu Tonegawa | MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA | Molecular Genetics of the Immune and Nervous Systems--Antibody Diversity and Memory Engrams | Nobel Prize 1987 |
| 20 | 135 | October 26, 2023 | Amita Sehgal | Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA | Biology of Bedtime: Understanding the basis of sleep | |
| 20 | 136 | March 21, 2024 | Sarah A. Tishkoff | University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA | Genomic Evolution and Adaptation in Africa | |
| 20 | 137 | April 11, 2024 | Johannes C. Walter | Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts, USA | Mechanisms of Vertebrate DNA Replication and Repair | |
| 20 | 138 | April 18, 2024 | Randy W. Schekman | Berkeley University of California, USA | Intercellular transfer of proteins and RNA | |
| 20 | 139 | April 25, 2024 | Thomas R. Cech | University of Colorado at Boulder, USA | That Magical Strand, RNA | Nobel Prize 1989 |