ASBMB taps 8 scientists for top awards

Awards to be presented at the Experimental Biology 2009 Meeting in New Orleans

The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) has announced the recipients of its annual awards competition. Eight scientists were singled out for their outstanding achievements and contributions to science. The awards will officially be presented at the Experimental Biology 2009 Meeting, April 18-22, in New Orleans.

David Davies of the NIDDK, National Institutes of Health, will give the Herbert Tabor/Journal of Biological Chemistry Lectureship. The award was established to recognize the many contributions of Dr. Tabor to both the JBC and the Society. Davies studies the structure and mechanism of action of the Toll-like receptors of the innate immune system as well as other proteins such as anti-anthrax lyase.

John Kuriyan, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and Chancellor's Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, will be honored with the ASBMB Merck Award for his exceptional achievements in and contributions to structural biology. Kuriyan is one of the world's leading researchers on protein kinases, and his studies of c-Src, c-Abl, and CaMKII have provided exciting new insights into the structure and function of these molecular systems.

Sarah Spiegel of the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine will be presented with the Avanti Award in Lipids. This award honors outstanding scientists whose research interests are in the field of lipids. Spiegel is one of the founders of the paradigm that sphingolipid metabolites serve as signaling molecules, and the sphingolipid signal that she discovered, sphingosine 1-phosphate (S1P), is now the most thoroughly characterized mediator in this field.

Susan Lindquist, an HHMI Investigator, member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, and Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will receive the FASEB Excellence in Science Award. This award recognizes outstanding achievement by women in the biological sciences. Lindquist is a pioneer in the study of protein folding and has shown that changes in folding can have profound and unexpected influences in fields as wide-ranging as human disease, evolution, and nanotechnology.