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Jennifer A. Doudna
Biographical Highlights
- Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2003)
- Professor of Biochemistry and
Molecular Biology, Department of Molecular and
Cell Biology, the University of California,
Berkeley (2003)
- Professor of
Biochemistry and Molecular Biology,
Department of Chemistry,
the University of California, Berkeley (2003)
- Faculty, Biophysics Graduate Group,
the University of California, Berkeley (2003)
- Faculty
Scientist, Physical
Biosciences Division, Lawerence Berkeley National
Laboratory (2003)
- Member,
National Academy
of Sciences (2002)
- Member, Board of Trustees, Pomona College (2001)
- American Chemical Society Eli Lilly Award
in Biological Chemistry (2001)
- R. B. Woodward Visiting Professor, Harvard
University (2000-2001)
- Alan T. Waterman
Award (2000)
- Investigator,
Howard Hughes Medical Institute (1997)
- Searle Scholar,
Kinship Foundation's Searle
Scholars Program (1996)
- Henry Ford II Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry,
Center for Structural Biology,
Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry,
Yale University (1994-2002)
- Lucille P. Markey Scholar in Biomedical Science,
University of Colorado (1991-1994,
Dr. Thomas R. Cech)
- Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Molecular Biology,
Massachusetts General Hospital and
Harvard Medical School (1989-1991,
Dr. Jack W. Szostak)
- Ph.D. Harvard University (1989,
Dr. Jack W. Szostak)
- B.A. Pomona College (1985, Dr. Sharon M. Panasenko)
New Insights Into Protein Synthesis and Hepatitis C Infections
(LBNL Research News, December 2005)
Scientists have uncovered key new information towards
understanding the crucial first step in protein synthesis,
the process by which the genetic code, harbored within DNA and
copied into RNA, is translated into the production of proteins.
This new information also helps to explain how viruses, such as
Hepatitis C, are able to highjack protein synthesis machinery
in humans for their own purposes.
Biochemist Jennifer Doudna and biophysicist Eva Nogales, both
of whom hold joint appointments with the Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), the University of California
at Berkeley, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI),
led a study in which cryo electron microscopy (cryo-EM) was used
to create a 3-D model of the protein complex called eukaryotic
translation initiation factor 3 (eIF3). The model showed that
the eIF3 protein complex employs the same structural mechanics
in the loading of either human or viral RNA to ribosomes,
the complex machinery in living cells responsible for protein
synthesis.
"This is the first insight into how the initiation mechanisms
of protein synthesis work specifically for humans, and a step
towards understanding at the molecular level what happens when
a viral infection occurs," said Doudna, a member of Berkeley
Lab's Physical Biosciences Division. "A better understanding
of these mechanisms could open the door to new and improved
therapies for viral infections."
(LBNL Research News source)
Renaissance Women featuring Dr. Doudna (HHMI Bulletin, Spring 2005)
The latest chapter of the "debate" over whether women can
compete in science has been playing out recently in print and
over airwaves nationwide. But Rita Colwell thinks some of the
issues raised today against women in science have already been
soundly refuted. "We shouldn't be reliving those arguments
from the 1940s and '50s," says Colwell, a former director of
the National Science Foundation (NSF) who is now a professor
at the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University.
As evidence, she holds up three of the last five winners of
NSF's Alan T. Waterman Award -- three HHMI investigators who
have shown "unequivocally that women scientists can compete."
Angelika Amon, Kristi S. Anseth, and Jennifer A. Doudna work
in different areas of science, but they share similar career
stories. Each, for example, won the Waterman award, a $500,000
honor that recognizes significant research by an investigator
under the age of 35 (see sidebar). "Significant" may in fact be
an understatement. Anseth's work in tissue engineering, Amon's
contributions to cell-cycle regulation, and Doudna's discovery
of RNA ribozyme structures have fundamentally changed the ways
their peers approach critical questions.
(more - 840KB .pdf)
(HHMI Bulletin source)
Biography of Dr. Doudna (PNAS, December 2004)
In the central dogma of molecular biology, DNA is transcribed
into RNA, which then is translated into protein. Although
RNA may be considered simply an intermediary between these
two important biological molecules, RNA is much more than
just a recipe for making proteins. In the 1980s, researchers
showed that certain RNA molecules function as enzymes, a role
previously attributed solely to proteins. Jennifer A. Doudna,
Ph.D., Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology and Chemistry
at the University of California, Berkeley, has devoted her
scientific career to revealing the secret life of RNA. Using
structural biology and biochemistry, Doudna's work deciphering
the molecular structure of RNA enzymes (ribozymes) and other
functional RNAs has shown how these seemingly simple molecules
can carry out the complex functions of proteins.
(more - 218KB .pdf)
(PNAS source)
Interview with Dr. Doudna (NAS, November 2004)
Listen to an
interview
with Dr. Doudna.
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