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Randy W. Schekman
USINFO | 2013-11-20 13:26
Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine 2013 Laureate
Randy Schekman in 2012
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| Born |
Randy Wayne Schekman December 30, 1948 (age 64) Saint Paul, Minnesota |
| Institutions |
University of California, Berkeley Howard Hughes Medical Institute Stanford University UCLA |
| Alma mater |
University of Edinburgh Stanford University UCLA |
| Thesis | Resolution and Reconstruction of a multienzyme DNA replication reaction (1975) |
| Doctoral advisor | Arthur Kornberg |
| Doctoral students | David Julius |
| Known for | Editor-in-chief of PNAS and ELife |
| Notable awards |
Lasker award (2002) Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize(2002) Massry Prize (2010) Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) (2013) Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (2013) |
Schekman was one of three researchers sharing the 2013 award of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.
Early life
Schekman was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He graduated from Western High School in Anaheim, California in 1966. He received a BA in Molecular Sciences from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1971. He spent his third year at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, as an exchange student. He received a PhD in 1975 from Stanford University for research on DNA replication working with Arthur Kornberg. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1984 and Professor in 1994.
Research
Since 1991, Schekman has been a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, Division of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. The Schekman Lab at that university carries out research into molecular descriptions of the process of membrane assembly and vesicular traffic in eukaryotic cells including yeast. Before that, he was a faculty member with the now disbanded Department of Biochemistry at the same university.
Awards
In 2002, Schekman received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research and Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize of Columbia University along with James Rothman for their discovery of cellular membrane trafficking, a process that cells use to organize their activities and communicate with their environment. He was awarded the Massry Prize from the Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California in 2010. Schekman is also a member of the Selection Committee for Life Science and Medicine which chooses winners of the Shaw Prize.
In 2013 he was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society. His nomination read:
Using a brilliantly conceived genetic screen, Schekman isolated sec mutants that accumulate secretory pathway intermediates, he cloned the corresponding genes and he established biochemical reactions that faithfully reproduced specific secretory pathway events. These studies transformed the secretion field, previously descriptive and morphological, into a molecular and mechanistic one. The cell-free reactions that Schekman established led to his isolation of the Sec61 translocation complex, the (COPII) vesicle coat complex, and the first purified inter-organelle transport vesicles. The Sec proteins are strikingly conserved and the trafficking mechanisms that Schekman discovered are at the heart of neurotransmission, hormone secretion, cholesterol homeostasis and metabolic regulation.
Schekman, Thomas C. Südhof, and James Rothman were awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries of machinery regulating vesicle traffic, a major transport system in our cells".
