National Medal of Science goes to protein-folding researcher

Next month, President Barack Obama will present researcher Susan Lindquist with a 2010 National Medal of Science, the highest honor given by the US government to members of the scientific community. Lindquist, who is a professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a Whitehead Institute member, is being honored for her protein-folding work, which could lead to treatments for neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease.

“The extraordinary accomplishments of these scientists, engineers, and inventors are a testament to American industry and ingenuity,” President Obama said in his announcement of the recipients on 15 Oct. “Their achievements have redrawn the frontiers of human knowledge while enhancing American prosperity.”

Susan Lindquist, MIT professor and Whitehead member, will receive the National Medal of Science for her work on protein folding from President Barack Obama on 17 Nov. She told BioTechniques, “I just can’t wait to meet the president.”

“It just made me ebullient. It just felt so good,” said Lindquist of receiving one of the 10 awards this year. One of her major accomplishments is the discovery that some regulatory proteins are reactive to stimuli in the cell’s environment, and respond to external environmental stressors by regulating different traits. In other words, these regulatory proteins help speed up evolution. “[Regulatory proteins are] a phenomenal induction system, just the most amazing gene regulatory system you could imagine,” Lindquist told BioTechniques.

A major target of her work has been heat-shock protein 90 (hp90), a regulatory protein that chaperones other proteins through the folding process. “The way [protein folding] shapes the process of evolution is potentially most exciting to me. The way that cancers evolve is fundamentally connected to hp90 and so is the evolution of drug resistance in fungi,” said Lindquist.

Currently, Lindquist is recreating the misfolded proteins in yeast cells, to understand the relationship between these misfolded proteins and neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s disease. These yeast-cell recreations will provide pharmaceutical companies with a method to screen possible drugs.

A longtime advocate for women in science, Lindquist believes that it’s possible to strike a balance between being an scientist and being a wife and mother. “I’ve had a wonderful marriage and two wonderful kids,” said Lindquist. “It’s not easy, but if you have a love and passion for both, you can do it.”

President Obama will present Lindquist and the nine other 2010 National Medal of Science recipients during a White House ceremony on 17 Nov. “I think he’s absolutely wonderful, so I just can’t wait,” said Lindquist about meeting the preside