Randy Schekman
Randy Wayne Schekman (born 30 December 1948 in Saint Paul, Minnesota) is an American biochemist and professor at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2013 he was awarded with James Rothman and Thomas Südhof the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Life
Schekman 1970 acquired a BA in Molecular Biology from the University of California, Los Angeles in Los Angeles, California, in 1975 and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry with Arthur Kornberg at Stanford University in Stanford, California. Then he had a job as a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Biology at the University of California, San Diego in San Diego, California before beginning in 1976 a PhD Student ( first Assistant Professor and later Associate Professor ) in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of California, Berkeley in Berkeley, California, took over. Since 1989 he has there full professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology.
Work
Schekman and his team have won numerous insights into regulation and processing of protein transport processes within cells and their underlying genes and gene products. The aim of the research were biological membranes and their production processes. Important discoveries were indeed gained in yeasts, but the corresponding mechanisms could also be detected in higher organisms. Disturbances of these processes have been identified to cause several hereditary diseases and other genetic disorders.