| Susan Lindquist |
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| CATEGORIES ABOUT SUSAN LINDQUIST | |
| living people | |
| lindquist, susan | |
| 1949 births | |
| molecular biologists | |
| american geneticists | |
| members and associates of the united states national academy of sciences | |
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Lindquist is best known for her research that provided strong evidence for a new paradigm in Genetics based upon the Inheritance of Protein s with new, self-perpetuating shapes rather than new DNA Sequence s. This research provided a Biochemical framework for understanding other mysteries in Biology , such as Alzheimer's Disease and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease . She is considered an expert in protein folding which, as explained by Lindquist in the following excerpt, is an ancient, fundamental problem in biology: :"What do "mad cows", people with Neurodegenerative Disease s, and an unusual type of inheritance in Yeast have in common? They are all experiencing the consequences of misfolded proteins. ... In humans the consequences can be deadly, leading to such devastating illnesses as Alzheimer's Disease. In one case, the misfolded protein is not only deadly to the unfortunate individual in which it has appeared, but it can apparently be passed from one individual to another under special circumstances - producing infectious neurodegenerative diseases such as Mad-cow Disease in Cattle and Creutzfeld-Jacob Disease in Human s." :--from "From Mad Cows to 'Psi-chotic' Yeast: A New Paradigm in Genetics," ''NAS Distinguished Leaders in Science Lecture Series'', 10 November 1999. Lindquist worked on the PSI+ element in yeast (a Prion ) and how it can act as a switch that hides or reveals numerous Mutation s throughout the Genome , thus acting as an Evolutionary Capacitor . She also proposed that a Heat Shock Protein , hsp90, may act in the same way, normally preventing Phenotypic consequences of genetic changes, but showing all changes at once when the HSP system is overloaded. Recently, Lindquist has made advances in Nanotechnology , researching organic fibers capable of self-organizing into structures smaller than manufactured materials. Her group also developed a yeast “living test tube” model to study protein folding transitions in neurodegenerative diseases and to test therapeutic strategies through high-throughput screening. She is a director and co-founder of FoldRx, a company developing drug therapies for diseases of protein misfolding and amyloidosis. BIOGRAPHY Lindquist received her PhD in biology from Harvard in 1976 , was the Albert D. Lasker Professor of Medical Sciences in the Department of Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology and a member of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University Of Chicago , and is now a professor of biology at MIT and a member of the Whitehead Institute For Biomedical Research . AWARDS
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