MARQUETTE, Mich.--The 2013 Howard Hughes Medical Institute's holiday lectures will explore how advances in genomics are leading to a better understanding of disease and to improved treatments. Three lectures will be offered via live webcast at Northern Michigan University. The NMU chapter of Sigma Xi, the scientific research society, invites the public to attend free of charge. All will be held in Mead Auditorium in the West Science Building.

Two lectures will be offered on Thursday, Dec. 5: "Sizing Up the Brain" from 1-2 p.m. and "Cancer as a Genetic Disease" from 2:30-3:30 p.m. "Decoding the Autism Puzzle" will be held from 9:30-11 a.m. Friday, Dec. 6. Charles Sawyers of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Christopher Walsh of Boston Children’s Hospital will reveal the breathtaking pace of discoveries into the genetic causes of various types of cancers and diseases of the nervous system and discuss the impact of those discoveries on our understanding of normal human development and disease.