A top national sports medicine specialist will present a public lecture Feb. 13. J. Timothy Lightfoot of Texas A&M University will discuss "Is the Revolution Underway? The Use of Genetics in Exercise Physiology."

More generally, he "will talk about the current understanding regarding how genetics regulates exercise characteristics and whether this understanding will change how exercise is prescribed," said Nicholas P. Greene, University of Arkansas assistant professor of exercise science. The university's Department of Health, Human Performance and Recreation is hosting the seminar.

The talk will be 11:40 a.m. to 12:55 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 13, in the Willard J. Walker Hall auditorium (218 WJWH), in the Sam M. Walton College of Business.

Lightfoot is the Omar Smith Endowed Professor of Kinesiology in the Department of Health and Kinesiology of A&M's College of Education and Human Development. A registered and certified clinical exercise physiologist, he is the director of the university's Sydney and J.L. Huffines Institute of Sports Medicine and Human Performance.

Lightfoot's work has received the American College of Sports Medicine's Prestigious Citation Award and the Southeast American College of Sports Medicine Henry J. Montoye Research Award. Lightfoot is a founder/director of the Genetic & Biological Regulators of Physical Activity International Consortium, having authored a consensus statement from the body on biological and genetic regulation of physical activity level. Lightfoot previously has been funded through the National Institutes of Health for his studies on the genetic regulation of physical activity.

Before A&M, Lightfoot was a professor and department chair at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte with similar positions previously at Florida Atlantic University. He holds a doctorate from the University of Tennessee and lower degrees from the University of Louisiana Monroe, and has held a postdoctoral fellowship at Johns Hopkins University.

Lightfoot's latest publication will be a reference manual for exercise genetics, with publication planned for this April.