The University of Padua awards an honorary degree in Medicine and Surgery to Douglas C. Wallace, Director of the Center for Mitochondrial and Epigenomic Medicine (CMEM) at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Research Institute and Professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

Douglas C. Wallace, offers a lecture in the Aula Magna on Discovery of a New Form of Human Genetics: Mitochondrial Genetic Medicine. Wallace is one of the leading experts in human genetics, whose scientific research on the functioning of mitochondrial DNA has proven to be of fundamental importance for human health.

The honorary academic title awarded was proposed by the Department of Biomedical Sciences: “Prof. Wallace defined the rules of genetic transmission of mitochondrial DNA by demonstrating his exclusively maternal inheritance, a discovery that allowed him to identify the first hereditary disease of mitochondrial DNA. Proving the existence of non-pathological modifications of the mitochondrial DNA that define haplogroups, his work specifies variants that make it possible to identify the African ancestor of all humanity and ability to reconstruct the human colonization of the earth. Prof. Wallace demonstrated that haplogroups have an adaptive role, showing beneficial effects in a given environment while unfavorable in others. Mitochondrial DNA variants are given considerable importance for understanding the predisposition of diseases ranging from diabetes to obesity, cardiomyopathies and neurodegenerative pathologies. His studies have contributed significantly to establishing the role of mitochondria in diseases with complex pathogenesis and the development of mitochondrial medicine as one of the new frontiers of modern medicine”.

Reservations are required to participate for the ceremony in the Aula Magna.

The award ceremony of the honorary degree of the University of Padua is broadcast live on Youtube.

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