Biography of Erin K. O'Shea

摘要

Having little background in biology has not hindered Erin K. O'Shea, professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) and assistant investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Trained primarily as a biophysical chemist, O'Shea has made her mark in several disciplines. As a graduate student, she made a significant contribution in her delineation of the physical structure of the leucine zipper motif. Her later foray into yeast biology has yielded dozens of publications on signal transduction and proteomics and has established her as a leader in the field of cell and molecular biology. For her many contributions to the fields of biochemistry, biophysics, and cell and molecular biology, O'Shea received the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Award in Molecular Biology in 2001. Despite earning numerous awards throughout her career, O'Shea notes that the NAS award was the "biggest deal" for her, because her graduate advisor, Peter Kim [Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA], and her postdoctoral advisor, Robert Tjian (University of California, Berkeley), had received the award in previous years. Also, by O'Shea's estimates, approximately 25% of winners of this award go on to win the Nobel Prize. O'Shea was elected to the NAS in 2004 for her contributions to the understanding of signal transduction, regulation of protein movement into and out of the nucleus, and how phosphorylation controls protein activity.