Transcript MCB Fall 2002 • Vol. 5, No. 2 Newsletter for Members and Alumni of the Department of Molecular & Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley MCB Explores New Funding Opportunities as Department Grows Fall Semester saw a raft of appointments and in the midst of applying for their first grants Safe and Sound promotions in MCB. Richard Harland took as principal investigators. Some of the rising over for Geoff Owen as department chair, stars that MCB has recently hired include Mark Schlissel became vice chair, and Robert Rebecca Heald, James Berger, Matthew Tjian took the title of Faculty Director of the Welch, Eva Nogales, Sharon Amacher, Health Sciences Initiative (see p. 3 for Karsten Weis, Richard Kramer, David Bilder details). With all this shuffling at the top, the and Jamie Cate to name a few (see previous real news was easy to overlook. In August, the newsletters for profiles). All received help department established an entirely new enti- from the department to cover costs such as ty: the MCB Development Committee. lab renovations, new equipment purchases In fact, the new committee signals a sea and technician salaries, as well as money from change in the way MCB goes about financing the training grant to pay graduate student its operations. This year, one of the depart- stipends. The trend continues. Three of the ment’s funding mainstays, a large training four new faculty profiled on page 4 of this grant from the National Institutes of Health, newsletter are starting new labs. And of was slightly reduced, and a generous annual course the recruitment of established faculty, contribution from the Howard Hughes such as recently hired structural biologists Medical Institute in support of graduate edu- John Kuriyan and Jennifer Doudna, comes cation came to an end. This unfortunate con- with its own cost of relocating an operational fluence of events has led the department to laboratory and its members. seek additional funding. The job of the Add to this the rising cost of doing cut- Development Committee, headed by ting-edge science, and it becomes clear Biochemistry and Molecular Biology that the department is in greater need of Professor Jeremy Thorner, is to seek out new financial resources than ever before. The The seismic retrofitting of opportunities for fundraising wherever they post-genomic era has redefined what is Barker Hall is finally complete, may lie. It now appears that the future holds essential to doing biology. Gel boxes and cen- a much greater reliance on industry sponsor- trifuges are no longer adequate. Now it takes and the building will ships, endowed chairs, and good old philan- microarray readers, confocal microscopes, be ready for occupancy in late thropy. mass spectrometers, and X-ray beamlines— On the one hand, costs are rising. To just to name a few of the big ticket items that December or early January. ensure that Berkeley remains at the forefront are expensive to acquire and operate but The work began in early 2000. of biological research, the department is now indispensable to the department’s research in the midst of an extremely successful drive mission. For example, a new mass spectrome- to recruit new and energetic young faculty. ter typically costs several hundred thousand The result has been three to four new faculty dollars. per year, mostly new assistant professors still continued on page 6 . FACULTY NEWS Rich Calendar (BMB) was elected to the Gunther Stent (Neurobiology, Emeritus) Editorial Board of The Journal of received the 2002 John Frederick Lewis Bacteriology and was made an editor of Prize at the November meeting of the Plasmid—A journal of microbial genomes and American Philosophical Society for having genome dynamics written the book-length philosophical essay “Paradoxes of Free Will”. The Lewis Prize is awarded to the author of the best book or monograph published by the Society in any given year. Jeremy Thorner (BMB) was appointed to a four-year term as a Member of the Committee on Awards of the American ▲ Michael A. Marletta (BMB) was Academy of Microbiology, the honorific appointed the Aldo DeBenedictis Chair arm of the American Society for in Chemistry. Microbiology, on July 1. On the same date, he was also appointed a Member of the Editorial Board for the Molecule Pages of the Alliance for Cell Signaling, operated out of UT Southwestern Medical School in ▲ Kathleen Collins (BMB) will receive Dallas. the fourth annual American Society for Cell Biology-Promega Award for Early Career Paola Timiras (CDB) published the 3rd Life Scientists at the ASCB Annual Meeting edition of her book Physiological Basis of in San Francisco in December. Aging and Geriatrics in September. CRC Press, Boca Ratan. Richard Harland (G&D) was promoted to chair of the department on July 1 after the previous chair, Geoff Owen, was named dean of the Biological Sciences Division in the College of Letters & Science. Mark Schlissel was named vice-chair. ▲ Steve Martin (CDB) was appointed Caroline Kane (BMB) officially became a Richard and Rhoda Goldman Professor member of the National Advisory Council of Biology. of the National Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities at the NIH. Robert Mortimer (G&D, Emeritus) has received the 2002 George W. Beadle Paul Kaufman (G&D) was promoted to Award, given by the Genetics Society of career Staff Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley America for distinguished service to the National Lab and Associate Adjunct field of genetics and the community of Professor in MCB as of July 1. geneticists. Mortimer shares the award ▲ Robert Tjian (BMB) was appointed with Andre Goffeau, a yeast geneticist at Faculty Director of the Berkeley Daniel Koshland Jr. (BMB) was the first the Université Catholique de Louvain, Health Sciences Initiative, a campus recipient of the Westheimer Medal, estab- Belgium, for their contributions to the wide health research collaboration. lished this year by Harvard University in development of yeast as a genetics system. For more on the HSI, visit honor of Frank Westheimer, Morris Loeb Mortimer also established the Yeast www.urel.berkeley.edu/health_sciences. Professor of Chemistry Emeritus at Harvard Genetic Stock Center, which has been and a pioneer in biological chemistry. tremendously useful to the entire com- Koshland was a postdoc at Harvard from munity of yeast geneticists. 1949–51. The medal is given for outstand- ing achievement in organic or biological chemistry. 2 @cal @cal is the official online community for alumni of the University of California, Berkeley. More than 20,000 people have registered with @cal so far. Members can join email lists, talk with Schekman Wins Lasker other alums, and create a personal open- ing page with news, weather, and other personalized content. The site has It has been a good year for Cell & Developmental Biology Professor Randy recently been upgraded and accelerated. Schekman. In May, he was chosen to chair the Biochemistry section of the National It’s still completely free, so join now at Academy of Sciences. Then in July, he took the helm of the Jane Coffin Childs and infect others, and abnormalities in cal.berkeley.edu. Memorial Fund for Medical Research, secretory pathways underlie various dis- which awards competitive grants for post- eases such as diabetes and possibly doctoral research. In December, he received Alzheimer’s disease. the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize of Columbia Schekman and Rothman attacked University, given to recognize exceptional the problem of trafficking from two accomplishments in biological and bio- divergent angles. Rothman took a bio- chemical research. chemical approach, attempting to But perhaps best of all, he shared the reconstitute transport pathways in the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical test tube with membranes and proteins Transcript Research with James Rothman of the Sloan- extracted from cells. Schekman chose Kettering Institute in New York City. The the genetic route. As an Assistant MCB Lasker Awards are considered to be one of Professor at Berkeley in the late 1970s, MCB at Berkeley is published twice a year by the two top honors in science, and 66 he began by isolating yeast mutants in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology Lasker Award recipients have gone on to which he could find vesicle traffic jams. at the University of California, Berkeley. win Nobel prizes. In this way, Schekman and graduate In pioneering work begun in the student Peter Novick identified the first DESIGNER: Betsy Joyce EDITOR: Jonathan Knight 1970s, Schekman and Rothman indepen- two secretory genes, sec1 and sec2, both dently elucidated the mechanisms by which of which turn out to be highly con- MCB Newsletter proteins travel between cellular compart- served and essential to secretion in University of California at Berkeley ments. They worked out the first molecular organisms from yeast to humans. Department of Molecular and Cell Biology details of vesicle transport, in which tiny 597 Life Sciences Addition Today, the once isolated niche of Berkeley, CA 94720-3200 membrane-bound packets of protein ferry cellular transport has exploded to form their cargo by first budding off of one cellu- a field in its own right, and in the [email protected] lar compartment and then fusing with process has influenced numerous other Send changes of address to: another. This intracellular trafficking, which fields from neurobiology to embryolo- Alumni Records can culminate in secretion from the cell, is gy. Schekman and Rothman received 2440 Bancroft Way critical to numerous biological phenomena, their awards during a luncheon ceremo- University of California from the communication of nerve cells to ny September 27 at the Pierre Hotel in Berkeley, CA 94720-4200 the release of adrenaline. Many viruses co- New York City. Or e-mail [email protected] opt the secretory system to escape one cell Current and past issues of the newsletter are available on the MCB web site (http://mcb.berkeley.edu/news/).