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The Protein Society announces its 2010 award recipients. The awards will be conferred at the 24th Annual Symposium of the Protein Society (August 1-5, 2010 in San Diego, California).

The 2010 Carl Brändén Award
Nobuhiro Go, Ph.D.
RIKEN Harima Institute, Japan

The Carl Brändén Award, sponsored by Rigaku Corporation, is given to an outstanding protein scientist who has also made exceptional contributions in the areas of education and/or service to the science.  The 2010 award will be presented to Dr. Nobuhiro Go (RIKEN Harima Institute, Japan) on August 1, 2010 for his scientific achievements, including the establishment of a lattice model of proteins, now well-known as the Go model. Dr. Go has also contributed markedly to the NMR distance geometry analysis as well as the analysis of protein dynamics. His current work in protein biophysics, protein physical chemistry and computer science has brought important physical principles to the field. Dr. Go is widely considered to be a pioneer in the theoretical study of protein folding principles, with many younger protein scientists owing a great deal to his ideas. In 2001, Dr. Go was one of the founders of the Protein Science Society of Japan, which has significantly promoted the globalization of protein science.

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The 2010 Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin Award
Lila M. Gierasch, Ph.D.
University of Massachusetts, Amherst

The Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin Award, sponsored by Genentech, is granted in recognition of exceptional contributions in protein science, which profoundly influence our understanding of biology. The 2010 award will be presented to Dr. Lila M. Gierasch (University of Massachusetts, Amherst) on August 4, 2010 for her application of biophysical methods to interrogate biological systems. Dr. Gierasch’s research has had a major impact in fields spanning sequence-structure relationships, protein folding and aggregation, the pioneering application of novel biophysical analyses (principally NMR), molecular recognition, and cooperativity in molecular machines and protein secretion. Her most recent research focuses on the chaperone-mediated folding process, how a β-sheet “clam” protein is folded, and how to monitor protein folding in a living cell and compare it with in vitro folding. Dr. Gierasch’s research is considered insightful and visionary by her peers.

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The 2010 Stein and Moore Award
Peter E. Wright, Ph.D.
The Scripps Research Institute

The Stein and Moore Award, sponsored by The Protein Society, is named for Nobel Laureates

Dr. William Stein and Dr. Stanford Moore. The award venerates their contribution to understanding the connection between chemical structure and catalytic activity of the active center of the ribonuclease molecule. The 2010 award will be presented to Dr. Peter E. Wright (The Scripps Research Institute) on August 4, 2010 for his studies in DNA bending, his work on specific transcription factor complexes, and his development of new NMR methods along with his investigation of conformational fluctuations and dynamics in the catalytic cycle of dihydrofolate reductase. His current research seeks to understand the intrinsically disordered regions of proteins in order to move beyond structure determination and the description of the dynamics of the system. Regarded by colleagues as a leader in both structural biology and protein science, Dr. Wright is especially admired for the way he has selected protein science problems (such as how folding is coupled to biological function and catalysis) whose solutions will have broad significance and applicability for decades to come.

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The 2010 Hans Neurath Award
Wendell A. Lim, Ph.D.
University of California, San Francisco - HHMI

The Hans Neurath Award, sponsored by the Hans Neurath Foundation, recognizes an individual who has made a recent contribution of unusual merit to basic research in the field of protein science, including but not restricted to the chemistry, design, folding, structure, or biological function of proteins. The 2010 award will be presented to Dr. Wendell A. Lim (University of California, San Francisco – HHMI) on August 1, 2010 for his studies encompassing a variety of techniques for understanding protein function. Dr. Lim’s research has set the stage for a new future in biology, which will enable researchers to engineer new signaling systems with potential implications for medicine and other biological applications. He has made seminal contributions that are central to a deep molecular understanding of cellular signaling pathways as well as illuminating the molecular logic of signal-transduction networks. At present, Dr. Lim’s research is aimed at linking together multiple regulatory modules to create cells that will be able to polarize and migrate in response to novels sets of signals. Dr. Lim is considered to be one of the foremost scientists working on the molecular understanding of signal transduction systems, with a remarkable range of scientific abilities in areas such as structural analysis, biochemistry, cell biology and mathematical modeling of cellular processes.

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The 2010 Christian B. Anfinsen Award
Yoshinori Fujiyoshi, Ph.D.
Kyoto University, Japan

The Christian B. Anfinsen Award, sponsored by The Aviv Family Foundation, recognizes significant technical achievements in the field of protein science. The 2010 award will be presented to Dr. Yoshinori Fujiyoshi (Kyoto University, Japan) on August 1, 2010 for his groundbreaking work in the field of membrane protein structure and for bringing electron crystallography to a new level by developing innovative cryoelectron microscopes. Dr. Fujiyoshi’s innovative work has made it possible to use electron microscopy to solve the 3D structures of a variety of channels, receptors and other membrane proteins. His current research efforts are on: bacteriorhodopsin; the plant light-harvesting complex; the structure of several members of the aquaporin family; and the acetylcholine receptor. Dr. Fujiyoshi’s contributions in the field of electron cryomicroscopy have set the gold standard for others in the field to emulate.

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The 2010 Emil Thomas Kaiser Award
Suzanne Walker, Ph.D
Harvard Medical School

The Emil Thomas Kaiser Award, sponsored by The Protein Society, recognizes a recent, highly significant contribution in applying chemistry to the study of proteins. The 2010 award will be presented to Dr. Suzanne Walker (Harvard Medical School) on August 1, 2010 for her achievements in the structure and function of enzymatic machinery in an effort to change the way scholars think about natural product antibiotics such as ramoplanin and moenomycin and how they work to block bacterial cell wall assembly. Dr. Walker’s studies have included the determination of the gene clusters involved in the biosynthesis of moenomycin, the detailed enzymological dissection of its functional components, and the mechanisms of several natural products that inhibit the biosynthetic pathway. Currently, her lab is investigating the biosynthesis of teichoic acid and anionic carbohydrate based polymers that are covalently attached to the peptidoglycan matrix of many gram positive bacteria. Dr. Walker is a world-class organic chemist/chemical biologist in the best research tradition of the late Professor Emil Thomas Kaiser.

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The 2010 Irving Sigal Young Investigator Award
Charalampos Kalodimos, Ph.D
Rutgers University

The Irving Sigal Young Investigator Award, sponsored by Merck Research Laboratories, recognizes a significant contribution to the study of proteins by a scientist who is in the early stages of an independent career and, generally, not more than 40 years of age at the time of the award. The 2010 award will be presented to Dr. Charalampos Kalodimos (Rutgers University) on August 4, 2010 for his landmark study of the mechanism of protein secretion. Dr. Kalodimos was able to solve the structure of the SecA protein in complex with a signal sequence using advanced NMR and isotope labeling techniques. His lab has recently shed new light on “dynamic allostery.” Dr. Kalodimos is a rising star who possesses tremendous energy, vision and passion.

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The following award also will be conferred at the 24th Annual Symposium:

The 2009 Irving Sigal Young Investigator Award
Virginia Cornish, Ph.D
Columbia University

The Irving Sigal Young Investigator Award, sponsored by Merck Research Laboratories, recognizes a significant contribution to the study of proteins by a scientist who is in the early stages of an independent career and, generally, not more than 40 years of age at the time of the award. The 2009 award will be presented to Dr. Virginia Cornish (Columbia University) on August 4, 2010 for her achievements in combining modern techniques in synthetic organic chemistry and molecular biology that manipulate nature’s machineries to carry out new chemistry. Her laboratory is pioneering chemical approaches to cell engineering—moving beyond advances in the last century for the synthetic manipulation of biomolecules in vitro and creating conceptually new approaches for the modification of biomolecules in a living cell. The main project in Dr. Cornish’s laboratory is a “chemical complementation” system for the directed evolution of enzymes with new properties. This project addresses the major bottleneck in the directed evolution field—how to select for enzyme catalysis of a wide variety of chemical transformations. Dr. Cornish has emerged as one of the top young faculty in the world in the area of chemical biology—her research being noted for its innovation and creativity as recognized by numerous awards.

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