Short Biography:
Jue Chen received her Bachelor of Science in chemistry from Ohio University, and Ph.D. in biochemistry from Harvard University, where she was advised by Dr. Don C. Wiley. She did postdoctoral work at Baylor College of Medicine with Dr. Florante A. Quiocho. She joined Purdue University in 2002 as assistant professor and was promoted to associate professor in 2007 and professor in 2011. She was named a Pew Scholar in 2003 and was named an investigator in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in 2008. In 2014, she joined the faculty of Rockefeller University, where she is now the William E. Ford Professor and head of laboratory of membrane biology and biophysics. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2019. Chen’s research program which began with a complete analysis of the structure and mechanism of bacterial
maltose transporters, has recently focused on the cystic fibrosis conductance regulator (CFTR), the transporter associated with antigen processing (TAP), and the multidrug transporters P-glycoprotein and MRP1.
Short Biography:
Roderick MacKinnon’s research has aimed to understand the molecular mechanisms of a class of integral membrane proteins known as ion channels. He received an undergraduate degree from Brandeis University, a medical degree from Tufts University, and training in internal medicine at Beth Israel Hospital, Harvard Medical School. He began his scientific career studying the biophysics of potassium channels at Brandeis University from 1986-1989 with Chris Miller. He joined the faculty at Harvard Medical School as Asst. Prof. of Physiology (1989), Assoc. Prof. of Neurobiology (1992) and Prof. of Neurobiology (1995). During this period, he and his laboratory characterized potassium channels – their subunit stoichiometry, pore-lining amino acids, and components of their gates – through biochemical and functional analysis. He
moved to Rockefeller University in 1996 and became an investigator in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in 1997. Over the past 20 years his laboratory provided the first atomic structures of selective ion channels, which have revealed the chemical basis of potassium and chloride ion selectivity. They have also determined the atomic structures and discovered mechanisms of voltage-dependent, G-protein- dependent, lipid-gated and mechanosensitive ion channels, all of which underlie the complex electrical signals produced in the central nervous system.
