Four 91爆料 researchers have been named AAAS Fellows, according to . They are among 449 newly elected fellows from around the world, who are recognized for their 鈥渟cientifically and socially distinguished achievements鈥� in science and engineering. New Fellows will receive an official certificate and a gold and blue rosette pin 鈥� representing science and engineering, respectively 鈥� to commemorate their election.

A tradition dating back to 1874, election as an AAAS Fellow is a lifetime honor. AAAS Fellows play a crucial role in shaping public policy, advancing scientific research and influencing national and global perspectives on critical issues. Becoming a AAAS Fellow is among the most distinct honors within the scientific community, and those elevated to the rank have made distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications. All fellows are expected to meet the commonly held standards of professional ethics and scientific integrity.

This year鈥檚 91爆料 AAAS fellows are:

, professor of biochemistry at the 91爆料 School of Medicine and the director of the 91爆料 Medicine Institute for Protein Design, was recognized for his groundbreaking work in computational protein design. Baker鈥檚 early work was in predicting how chains of chemicals fold into molecular structures that determine protein functions. He went on to design new proteins from scratch to carry out tasks in medicine, technology and sustainability. His team is developing vaccines, targeted drug delivery for cancer, enzymes to break down environmental pollutants and innovative biomaterials, among other endeavors. Baker received the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his scientific achievements to benefit humankind. He has also been awarded the Overton Prize in computational biology, Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology, Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences and Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences.

, professor and chair of neurobiology and biophysics at the 91爆料 School of Medicine, was honored for her distinguished contributions to cognitive and systems neuroscience. Buffalo, who is the Wayne E. Crill Endowed Professor, is particularly noted for her pioneering research on the neural basis of remembering and learning, and for advancing translational research into broader insights on human brain function. She studies the relationship between eye movements and activity in the hippocampus and other nearby brain regions involved in forming memories, navigating and recalling the emotional context of past events. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, which presented her with the Troland Award for innovative, multidisciplinary studies. She also helps train postdoctoral scholars at the 91爆料 Medicine Institute for Translational Immunology.

, professor and chair of genome sciences at the 91爆料 School of Medicine, was noted for her distinguished contributions to the fields of genetics and genomics. She is known for advancing knowledge of the mechanisms underlying molecular evolution and genetic variation in yeasts and in humans. Her lab develops new tools to study mutations and their consequences, genome structure, gene interactions, and the evolution of gene expression. She has a longstanding interest in how copy number variations 鈥� how many times a particular segment of DNA repeats 鈥� affect adaptation, and how these variations arise. Dunham applies her genomics methods to diverse topics, including the biology of aging and the emergence of multi-drug antibiotic resistance. Dunham is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University and was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Faculty Scholar.

, 91爆料 professor of chemistry, was honored for distinguished contributions to the theoretical understanding of nanoscale light-matter interactions, particularly for the design and interpretation of advanced spectroscopies that use electrons and light to probe material excitations. Masiello is an applied physicist whose research focuses on creating simple-yet-rich theoretical models that bring insight and understanding to observations spanning from quantum materials to nanophotonics. Masiello was hired as an assistant professor at the 91爆料 in 2010. He is a faculty member in both the Molecular & Engineering Sciences Institute and the Institute for Nano-Engineered Systems, and is also an adjunct professor of applied mathematics and of materials science and engineering. Masiello’s honors include receiving an NSF CAREER Award and a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, called PECASE, awarded by President Obama at the White House.

Three professors at the 91爆料 have been elected to the National Academy of Medicine in recognition of excellence in the fields of health and medicine, along with a commitment to volunteer service. Election to the Academy is considered one of the most prestigious honors in health and medicine.

Dr. , a professor of epidemiology and of pediatrics; Dr. , a professor of pediatrics; and , an affiliate professor of biochemistry, were among the 100 new members .

鈥�This is a tremendous and well-deserved honor for each of these valued members of the 91爆料 community,鈥� 91爆料 Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Tricia Serio said. 鈥淎ll three聽are all visionary leaders in their vital fields, and their commitment to creating a better world through their work exemplifies the impact we strive for at the University of Washington.鈥�

Dr. Rowhani-Rahbar was recognized for his research on gun violence, which the Academy said has “deepened our understanding of the risk and consequences of firearm-related harm.” His work integrates data from health care and criminal justice systems to better understand risk factors related to gun violence and injury. That research has informed policies and programs aimed at reducing the risk of firearm-related harm, particularly in underserved and overlooked communities.

He is the Bartley Dobb Professor for the Prevention of Violence and interim director of the in the 91爆料 School of Medicine.

Dr. Coker heads the General Pediatrics department at Seattle Children’s Hospital and is co-director of the . Her research focuses on eliminating health and health care disparities for Black and Latinx children, as well as families in low-income communities. The Academy cited her leadership in advancing child health equity and work that has “transformed our understanding of how to deliver child preventive health care during the critical early childhood period to achieve equitable health outcomes and reduce disparities.”

She is the founder and former director of the Health Equity Research Program at Seattle Children’s Center for Diversity and Health Equity.

Zeng is executive vice president and director of the in Seattle. The Academy recognized her leadership of a team whose work has led to “transformative understanding of cell type diversity” by generating large-scale, open-access datasets and tools for use in neuroscience research.

Seven 91爆料 faculty members have been elected to the Academy in the past four years.

For more information or to contact any of the honorees, email Alden Woods at acwoods@uw.edu.聽

Membranes are crucial to our cells. Every cell in your body is enclosed by one. And each of those cells contains specialized compartments, or organelles, which are also enclosed by membranes.

Membranes help cells carry out tasks like breaking down food for energy, building and dismantling proteins, keeping track of environmental conditions, sending signals and deciding when to divide.

Biologists have long struggled to understand precisely how membranes accomplish these different types of jobs. The primary components of membranes 鈥� large, fat-like molecules called lipids and compact molecules like cholesterol 鈥� make great barriers. In all but a few cases, it鈥檚 unclear how those molecules help proteins within membranes do their jobs.

In a published Jan. 25 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team at the 91爆料 looked at phase separation in budding yeast 鈥� the same single-celled fungus of baking and brewing fame 鈥� and reports that living yeast cells can actively regulate a process called phase separation in one of their membranes. During phase separation, the membrane remains intact but partitions into multiple, distinct zones or domains that segregate lipids and proteins. The new findings show for the first time that, in response to environmental conditions, yeast cells precisely regulate the temperature at which their membrane undergoes phase separation. The team behind this discovery suggests that phase separation is likely a 鈥渟witch鈥� mechanism that these cells use to govern the types of work that membranes do and the signals they send.

鈥�Previous work showed that these domains can be seen in the membranes of living yeast cells,鈥� said lead author Chantelle LeveilIe, a 91爆料 doctoral student in chemistry. 鈥淲e asked: If it鈥檚 important for a cell to have these domains, then if we change the cell鈥檚 environment 鈥� by growing them at different temperatures 鈥� would the cell 鈥榗are鈥� and devote energy to maintaining phase separation in its membranes? The clear answer is yes, it does!鈥�

Past research has shown that when sugar is plentiful, the yeast cell鈥檚 vacuole 鈥斅燼n important organelle for storage and signaling 鈥� grows large and its membrane appears uniform under a microscope. But when food supplies dwindle, the vacuole undergoes phase separation, with many round zones appearing in the organelle鈥檚 membrane.

In this new study, Leveille and her co-authors 鈥� 91爆料 chemistry professor , 91爆料 biochemistry professor and Caitlin Cornell, previously a 91爆料 doctoral student in chemistry 鈥� sought to understand whether yeast can actively regulate phase separation. Leveille grew yeast at their typical laboratory temperature of 86 F with plenty of food. After the food dwindled, the yeast cell vacuole membranes underwent phase separation, as expected. When Leveille briefly raised the temperature in the yeast鈥檚 environment by about 25 degrees Fahrenheit, the domains disappeared. Then Leveille grew yeast at a cooler temperature 鈥� 77 F instead of the normal 86 F 鈥� and discovered that the domains disappeared about 25 degrees above this new temperature. When she grew yeast in still colder conditions, at 68 F, phase separation yet again disappeared about 25 degrees higher than their growth temperature.

These experiments showed that the yeast cells always maintained phase separation in the vacuole membrane until the temperature rose about 25 degrees above their growth temperature.

鈥淲e think this is a clear sign that yeast cells are engineering the vacuole membrane in different environmental conditions to maintain this consistent state of phase separation,鈥� said Leveille.

Phase separation in the vacuole membrane likely serves an important purpose in yeast, she added.

鈥淭his result suggests that membrane phase separation for yeast is likely a two-way door,鈥� said Leveille. 鈥淔or example, if the cells ever found food again, they would want to go back to their original state. Yeast do not want to get too far away from the transition.鈥�

Future research could identify other membrane components that affect the vacuole membrane鈥檚 ability to phase separate, as well as the consequences of its phase separation. Biologists have known that, when the domains appear in the yeast vacuole鈥檚 membrane, the cell stops dividing. These two events may be linked because the yeast vacuole鈥檚 membrane contains two complexes of proteins that are important for cell division. When the complexes are far apart, cell division stops.

鈥淧hase separation in the vacuole occurs right when the yeast cell needs to stop dividing because its food supply has run out,鈥� said Merz. 鈥淥ne idea is that phase separation is the mechanism that the yeast cell 鈥榰ses鈥� to separate these two protein complexes and stop cell division.鈥�

In cells from yeast to humans, protein complexes embedded in membranes affect cell behavior. If additional research shows that phase separation in the yeast vacuole regulates cell division, it would likely be the first rigorous example of cell regulation through this once-overlooked property of membranes.

鈥淧hase separation could be a common, reversible mechanism to modulate many, many types of cellular properties,鈥� said Keller.

Cornell is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.

For more information, contact Keller at slkeller@uw.edu and Merz at merza@uw.edu.

Five faculty members and one affiliate professor at the 91爆料 are among 120 new members and 30 international members elected to the National Academy of Sciences. The new members include 59 women, the most chosen in a single year, according to an April 26 by the academy.

• , professor of computer science and engineering
• , professor of biochemistry
• , professor emeritus of applied mathematics
• , professor of biology
• , professor of biological structure

In addition, , a professor of human biology and of public health sciences at the , was elected to the academy. Overbaugh is an affiliate 91爆料 professor of microbiology.

,聽who holds the Bill and Melinda Gates Chair in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, works聽in聽theoretical computer science. She earned a bachelor鈥檚 degree in applied mathematics and a doctoral degree in computer science at Stanford University. Before joining the 91爆料 faculty in 1994, she worked for five years at what was then the Digital Equipment Corporation’s Systems Research Center. At the 91爆料, Karlin is a member of the聽聽group in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. Her research centers on designing and analyzing certain types of algorithms 鈥� such as聽probabilistic algorithms, which incorporate a degree of chance or randomness, and聽online algorithms, which can handle input delivered in a step-by-step manner. Karlin also works in algorithmic game theory, a field that merges algorithm design with considerations of strategic behavior. Her studies have also intersected聽other disciplines, including economics and data mining. In 2016, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

, who holds the Edmond H. Fischer-Washington Research Foundation Endowed Chair in Biochemistry, studies molecular recognition, particularly how proteins interact in human diseases. One of her laboratory鈥檚 efforts is to study the large, multifunctional protein produced by the BRCA1 gene, which when carrying certain mutations can predispose people to inherited forms of breast and other cancers. Klevit鈥檚 group also studies small heat shock proteins, which are implicated in certain muscle wasting diseases and some cancers. Cells manufacture these under stress due to heat, lack of oxygen and changes in acidity or alkalinity. Klevit鈥檚 team uses different nuclear magnetic resonance approaches to understand the structure and functions of these proteins, which have been difficult to solve. Klevit and her team also use NMR to study a sensor enzyme critical to bacterial virulence. This enzyme responds to environmental signals, such as the presence of antimicrobials, by turning on or off genes involved in infection. Klevit won a Rhodes Scholarship in 1978 鈥� a year after the program was open to women 鈥� to study at Oxford University, where she earned a doctoral degree in chemistry in 1981.

, who earned a doctoral degree in computer science at Stanford University, came to the 91爆料 in 1985 after postdoctoral positions at New York University and the University of California, Los Angeles. While at 91爆料, he was also briefly a faculty member at ETH Z眉rich. LeVeque鈥檚 mathematical research has spanned a variety of topics related to numerical algorithms for solving the partial differential equations that model wave propagation phenomena. He has also developed extensive open source software based on this research. LeVeque鈥檚 mathematical and computational studies have impacted fields ranging from biophysics to astrophysics. Much of his recent work has focused on modeling geological hazards, particularly tsunamis, and he is part of an interdisciplinary team performing hazard assessments for the coast of the Pacific Northwest. LeVeque has also taught extensively and authored several textbooks. He is a data science fellow at the , and was previously elected a fellow of both the American Mathematical Society and the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

, who holds the Benjamin D. Hall Endowed Chair in Basic Life Sciences and is an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, came to the 91爆料 in 2018 after 21 years as a faculty member at Stanford University. She earned a doctoral degree in cell biology from the University of California, San Francisco, and was a fellow at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research before heading to Stanford. Theriot鈥檚 research centers on the dynamic world within cells. Her work explores how cells self-organize to perform tasks 鈥� like change shape, move, respond to stimuli, and shuttle items through their interiors. Theriot has investigated these questions in a variety of biological settings, such as how white blood cells crawl through our bodies and engulf invading microbes, how fish skin heals wounds, and how the bacterial pathogen Listeria monocytogenes rearranges the proteins of the human cell鈥檚 鈥渟keleton.鈥� She employs many types of experimental approaches, from mathematical modeling to video-based analyses of cellular movements. Theriot has received fellowships from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

, who is chair of the Department of Biological Structure, studies how the circuitries of nerve cells develop, break and reassemble. Her research model is the vertebrate retina, the part of the eye that receives light and converts it into signals sent to the brain. Her team applies a diversity of methods to investigate the structure and connectivity of nerve cells in normal and altered retinas, such as tracking changes in zebrafish retinal neurons from the time they first appear until they form circuits and investigating how retinal neurons rewire during cellular regeneration. In addition, Wong鈥檚 team constructs detailed connectivity maps of neurons in the inner and outer retina, and researches how the transmission of nerve signals helps establish and maintain connectivity between retinal neurons. She is collaborating to study how the eyes encode a visual scene. Wong earned her doctoral degree from the Australian National University, and serves on the steering committee for the National Eye Institute鈥檚 , which seeks to restore vision lost from damage to the retina and optic nerve.

With these new members, the National Academy of Sciences now has 2,461 active members, as well as 511 international members, who are nonvoting and hold citizenship outside of the U.S.

Four 91爆料 professors were among the winners of the 2021 Breakthrough Prize, which recognizes groundbreaking achievements in the life sciences, fundamental physics and mathematics.

David Baker, a professor in the 91爆料 School of Medicine鈥檚 department of biochemistry, won the prize for life sciences, while a team of 91爆料 physics professors, including Eric Adelberger, Jens Gundlach and Blayne Heckel, earned the prize for fundamental physics.

The annually awards the Breakthrough Prizes, which were founded in 2013 and are dubbed the 鈥淥scars of Science.鈥� Each prize is worth $3 million.

Baker, director of the , was recognized for developing technology that allowed the design of proteins never seen before in nature, including novel proteins that have the potential for therapeutic intervention in human diseases.

Over billions of years, nature has produced a thousand trillion proteins聽鈥� the workhorse molecules essential to every life function聽鈥� each with a unique origami-style design that allows it to precisely lock onto an adjacent molecule to perform its unique function. Then came the Protein Design Revolution, harnessing supercomputing and newly discovered principles of how natural proteins fold to turn evolution on its head.

鈥淲e could wait another million years for the protein we need to evolve, or we could design it ourselves,鈥� Baker said. His enthusiastic design community of 250,000聽鈥� citizen scientists, Foldit players and gamers聽鈥� uses a combination of human ingenuity and automated computational firepower. Their latest project is a promising crowd-sourced novel protein that could adhere to a COVID-19 virus and destroy it.

鈥淥ne-hundred people will approach the solution to a problem from 100 different perspectives,鈥� said Baker, who invented the open-source Rosetta software for computational modeling and analysis of novel proteins. The promise of protein design? Universal vaccines for flu, HIV, COVID-19 and cancer; medicines for chronic pain; smart therapeutics; nanoengineering for solar energy capture, and more.

鈥淚 am excited about this award accelerating progress at the IPD in de novo design of new proteins not found in nature to address current challenges in medicine and beyond,鈥� Baker said. 鈥淚 thank my wonderful colleagues聽鈥� undergraduate and graduate students, postdocs, faculty and staff聽鈥� at the IPD and 91爆料, and members of the general public contributing to our efforts through the rosetta@home and Foldit projects.鈥�

The award gives Baker and Gundlach, longtime friends who go on hikes and climbs together, something new to talk about the next time they hit the trails.

鈥淒avid is very well deserving of this prize,鈥� said Gundlach, who currently serves as principal investigator on the 鈥檚 research in physics. 鈥淗e has really pioneered the field of protein folding in a major way.鈥�

The E枚t-Wash Group, made up of 91爆料 physicists Adelberger, Gundlach and Heckel, was recognized for precision fundamental measurements that test our understanding of gravity, probe the nature of dark energy and establish limits on couplings to dark matter is.

“I think the award was quite unexpected to all of us, but as a surprise it generates even more joy,鈥� Gundlach said. 鈥淧resenting our research to the public was always rewarding because our experiments are intriguing and fun to hear about, but knowing that a panel of famous physicists selected our work feels particularly rewarding.鈥�

The equivalence principle 鈥� the observation that objects, whatever they are made of, fall with the聽same acceleration 鈥� inspired Albert Einstein’s聽relativistic theory of gravity. Motivated by the unexplained phenomena of聽dark matter and dark energy that hint towards new physics, as well as theoretical attempts to develop unified quantum theories of gravity that聽inherently predict violations of the equivalence principle and additional curled-up space dimensions,聽the 91爆料 E枚t-Wash team decided to probe the fundamental properties of gravity with a new generation of instruments.

They took the two-century-old torsion balance concept and developed it into a supremely sensitive 21st-century instrument to look for new fundamental physics. They tested the equivalence principle, the inverse square law, and measured the gravitational constant聽with unprecedented precision and sensitivity.聽For example, their latest inverse-square law test probed gravity at ultra-short distances, establishing that any extra dimension must be curled up with a radius less than one-third聽the diameter of a human hair.

Last year, Lukasz Fidkowski, an assistant professor of physics at the 91爆料, won the New Horizons in Physics Prize from the Breakthrough Foundation. At least three researchers associated with the 91爆料 have received Breakthrough prizes in prior years.

Each year, the Prize is celebrated at a gala award ceremony, where the awards are presented by superstars of movies, music, sports and tech entrepreneurship. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, however, this year鈥檚 ceremony has been postponed until March 2021.

For more information, contact Victor Balta at balta@uw.edu.

鈥淲e congratulate these incoming members of the Academy for excelling in a broad array of fields; we want to celebrate them and learn from them,鈥� said Nancy C. Andrews, chair of the Board of Directors of the American Academy. 鈥淲hen Academy members come together, bringing their expertise and insights to our work, they help develop new insights and potential solutions for some of the most complex challenges we face.鈥�

Cauce 鈥� who was named to the Educational and Academic Leadership section of the Academy鈥檚 Public Affairs, Business and Administration class 鈥� became the 33rd president of the 91爆料 on Oct. 13, 2015 after serving as interim president for seven months and having previously served as provost and executive vice president.

Throughout her career, Cauce has championed access to higher education, including through the , which provides full tuition to eligible Washington students who otherwise could not attend college. As part of her strong belief in ensuring access to higher education for all, just one month into her role as interim president she engaged students in an honest discussion about race and equity, to create a more just and diverse community.

Cauce is a professor of Psychology and American Ethnic Studies, with secondary appointments in the Department of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies and the College of Education. She maintains an active research program, focusing on adolescent development, with a special emphasis on at-risk youth. She is also a strong advocate for women and underrepresented minorities to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Davis was named to the Cellular and Developmental Biology (including Genetics), Microbiology and Immunology Section of the Biological Sciences Class of the Academy. Davis and her colleagues explore the dynamics of the chromosome capture that occurs in preparation for cell division.

Impressive molecular machinery tries to assure that each cell resulting from the split receives a proper set of chromosomes. Mistakes in sorting, separating and distributing the chromosomes could cause serious problems, such as cancer. Davis鈥� team looks at how the movement and segregation of chromosomes is orchestrated. This chromosome assembly is trial and error, but cells usually can find and fix mistakes. As chromosomes attach to the separation machinery, checkpoints tune into to the connection and the tension it produces. If this quality assurance detects that a chromosome is incorrectly captured, it is released for another try.

The Davis lab uses many ways of examining this and related controls. These include genetic analysis, proteomics, quantitative microscopy, computational modeling and biochemical assays.

Davis holds the Earl W. Davie/ZymoGenetics Chair in Biochemistry at 91爆料 Medicine. She also heads the 91爆料鈥檚 Yeast Resource Center, funded by the National Institutes of Health to develop technologies for exploring protein structure and function.

Toro was named to the Mathematics, Applied Mathematics and Statistics section of the Academy鈥檚 Mathematical and Physical Sciences class. Her research centers on the premise that objects, which may at first appear irregular or disordered, actually have regular features that are quantifiable. Toro鈥檚 work spans geometric measure theory, harmonic analysis and partial differential equations. Toro studies the mathematical questions that come up in systems where the known data are 鈥渞ough,鈥� as well as interfaces that arise in 鈥渘oisy鈥� minimization problems.

In addition to her research, Toro has also worked to increase diversity in mathematics. She helped launch Latinx in the Mathematical Sciences, including two conferences through the National Science Foundation highlighting the achievements of Latinx mathematicians.

Toro joined the 91爆料 faculty in 1996 and her career includes numerous honors and accolades. Last year, she received the 91爆料鈥檚 Marsha L. Landolt Distinguished Graduate Mentor Award. In 2017, she was elected as a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society. Toro has also been a Guggenheim Fellow, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow and a Simons Foundation Fellow.

Founded in 1780, the is one of the country鈥檚 oldest learned societies and independent policy research centers, convening leaders from the academic, business and government sectors to respond to the challenges facing the nation and the world.

The new members join the company of Academy members elected before them, including Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton in the eighteenth century; Ralph Waldo Emerson and Maria Mitchell in the nineteenth; and Robert Frost, Martha Graham, Margaret Mead, Milton Friedman, and Martin Luther King, Jr. in the twentieth.

Learn more about the Academy’s , , and on its website .

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David Baker, Dayong Gao, Herbert Sauro named fellows of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering

91爆料 professors , and have been named fellows of the .

The three faculty members are among the institute’s , numbering 157 in all, chosen for their “distinguished and continuing achievements” in medical and biological engineering.

Called the AIMBE for short, the institute is a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization. Its 2,000-member College of Fellows includes outstanding engineers, entrepreneurs and innovators in medical and biological engineering.

The organization advocates for the value of medical bioengineering in society. Its mission, which also drives advocacy initiatives, is to “recognize excellence, advance the public understanding and accelerate medical and biological innovation,” according to its website.

Baker is a professor of biochemistry and directs the . Gao is a professor of mechanical engineering and director of the . Sauro is a professor of bioengineering and director of the . All three have affiliate appointments in other departments as well.

Election to the institute’s College of Fellows is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to a medical and biological engineer; fellows include three Nobel Prize laureates and 18 recipients of the Presidential Medal of Science or National Medal of Technology and Innovation. The institute’s annual meeting, scheduled for March, was cancelled due to health concerns and the fellows were inducted remotely.

***

Essay fondly remembers Ellis Goldberg, professor of political science

A researcher with the nonprofit has penned a remembrance and appreciation of , 91爆料 professor of political science, who September 20, 2019, at the age of 72.

Goldberg, a political economist and scholar of Middle East politics, was a longtime 91爆料 faculty member and former director of the Middle East Center in the Jackson School of International Studies. He also wrote a blog called “” that commented on Middle Eastern and U.S. politics.

He is remembered fondly on the Middle East research project’s website by , clinical assistant professor in Liberal Studies at New York University, in an essay titled “Ellis Goldberg, Egypt and a Reverence for Life.”

El-Ghobashy writes that Goldberg “loved Egypt and knew more about its history and political economy than anyone I know. 鈥� At a time when lives in Egypt are imperiled by deprivation, dictatorship and disease, as are so many lives across the globe, an intellectual sensibility grounded in a reverence for life is a gift and an exigency.”

With Goldberg’s death, El-Ghobashy writes, “we lost one of the most erudite, generous and original scholars of the modern Middle East and North Africa, a truly reflective mind 鈥�”聽 .

There were remembrances of Goldberg from the and the as well.

91爆料 Notebook is a section of the 91爆料 News site dedicated to telling stories of the good work done by faculty and staff at the 91爆料. Read all posts here.

The Goldwater Scholarship Program supports undergraduates who 鈥渟how exceptional promise of becoming this nation鈥檚 next generation of research leaders鈥� in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The scholarships go toward tuition, room and board, fees and books up to $7,500 annually for one or two years.

The 2020 Goldwater Scholars from the 91爆料 are Keyan Gootkin, Parker Ruth and Karen Zhang.

• Gootkin, who is majoring in astronomy and physics, studies how massive stars end their lives and volunteers with the Theodor Jacobsen Observatory, the League of Astronomers, and the 91爆料鈥檚 campus and mobile planetariums.
• Ruth is pursuing a double major in bioengineering and computer engineering, and studies computational tools to improve health care access. Ruth plans to pursue a doctoral degree in computer science.
• Zhang, who is studying both microbiology and biochemistry, is interested in 鈥渢he machineries of life at a molecular level and engineering them to perform novel tasks,鈥� and after graduation would like to obtain a doctoral degree in either bioinformatics or synthetic biology.

The 2020 Goldwater Scholars were selected from a pool of more than 5,000 undergraduate students nominated by 461 academic institutions. A majority of this year鈥檚 awardees, 287, are studying the natural sciences, while 59 are majoring in engineering and 50 are majoring in mathematics or computer science. Most say that they intend to pursue a doctoral degree.

The Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program was established by Congress in 1986 to honor Barry Goldwater, a five-term senator from Arizona and Air Force Reserve major general. Since 1989, the program has provided 9,047 scholarships totaling more than $71 million dollars.

Gelb studies enzymes. These are the minute but busy protein catalysts within our cells that perform a variety of tasks 鈥� such as breaking down food, shuttling away toxins and building up new molecules to keep our cells, organs and bodies in good working order.

But sometimes, due to random genetic mutation, these enzymes struggle to perform their proper roles, causing rare and often fatal diseases in babies and children. Gelb and his colleagues have worked to develop screens that can accurately test in babies how well certain types of enzymes are functioning. Using only a drop of blood, these tests can identify newborns who will need treatment, saving their lives and giving them a robust start.

Ahead of his lecture, Gelb sat down with 91爆料 News to discuss his research.

What types of diseases have you been working on to develop newborn screening procedures?

MG: They’re called . The lysosome is a cellular compartment in which enzymes break down large molecules and recycle their components for use by the cell. Each type of lysosomal storage disease is caused by a deficiency in a different lysosomal enzyme. The deficiency disrupts biochemical pathways and cellular metabolism 鈥� eventually leading to disease.

What are the advantages to screening newborns for these rare diseases?

MG: The main advantage is treatment. It is valuable to begin treatment for these diseases early 鈥� before the symptoms of these enzyme deficiencies emerge that would negatively impact development of these children or threaten their lives. This is really the chemistry of saving babies.

How does a tiny drop of blood tell us whether these enzymes are working properly?

MG: These enzymes are present in blood. So we use dried blood spots 鈥� which is something that can be easily collected from a newborn in a hospital or clinic. And we developed a way to use mass spectrometry to screen for how well these different lysosomal storage enzymes are working. Mass spectrometry was a very promising approach because you can easily adapt it to measure the function of many types of enzymes at once in a clinical setting.

What led you to pursue this line of research in the first place?

MG: I first got the idea in the mid-1980s, when my wife was pregnant with our second child and underwent amniocentesis. I asked the nurses what they were checking for, and they said just a few conditions such as Down syndrome. But I had this background in chemistry, and I was studying enzymes. So I thought, “Why not test for enzymes?” I’d also recently seen the film “Lorenzo’s Oil,” which is about a boy with a rare genetic disease. Those experiences planted the idea in my head, though I didn’t immediately pursue newborn screening for enzyme deficiencies.

Then what ultimately led you to develop tests for enzyme functions at birth?

MG: Well, I eventually met here at the 91爆料, who is a professor of pediatrics and an expert in rare genetic diseases. I talked to him about my idea to develop a newborn screen for enzyme deficiencies. He liked it. I then brought in my colleague , a fellow 91爆料 professor of chemistry and an expert on mass spectrometry. The three of us form a good team: I’m the chemist, Ron’s the clinician and Frank’s the mass spectrometry expert.

Many lysosomal storage diseases exist. How do you and your colleagues decide which ones to target with your tests?

MG: Well, we want these tests to be informative and useful for families. So, we’ve chosen to focus on diseases for which there are treatments available.

Once you develop an accurate screen for a disease, how could it be incorporated into the standard panel of newborn tests?

MG: In the United States, individual states mandate their own array of tests for newborn babies. There are federal guidelines 鈥� but they are recommendations. It’s ultimately up to the states to decide. So, to get a particular test adopted in your state, there are two basic routes: One is to advocate for the test to be incorporated into the recommended federal guidelines, which are set up through the congressional Newborn Screening Saves Lives Reauthorization Act of 2014. The other route is to simply lobby an individual state government directly. Tests that we’ve developed for two lysosomal storage diseases 鈥� and 鈥� have gone through the federal route. A test for another lysosomal storage disease, , was first adopted by some localities on a state-by-state basis. Through these approval pipelines, newborns are currently screened for dozens of diseases, most of them rare. In Washington state, for example, out of 80,000 babies born this year, screening for one enzyme deficiency may identify four or five babies who need immediate treatment, and about a dozen who need monitoring for possible future disease. But that’s as many as 20 lives saved or improved each year in Washington state, and 20 families spared suffering.

Where would you like to see the field of newborn screening go in the future?

MG: I would like to see every severe genetic disease 鈥� one that causes massive suffering or is life-threatening, but is also treatable 鈥� added to the list. That requires doing the necessary experiments to develop screens for these diseases, and the trials needed to show that those tests are accurate. That way, these screens become a source of hope for families.

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The 42nd annual will be held at 7:30 p.m. Jan. 23 in Kane Hall, room 130.

Cells 鈥� the building blocks of our bodies 鈥� are encapsulated by membranes. The same goes for the specialized compartments within our cells.

These membranes are extremely thin, oily films, containing proteins and fatty molecules called lipids. For decades, scientists have argued about how cell membranes organize and maintain distinct regions enriched in particular protein and lipid types. These regions are thought to influence cellular activities, such as the signaling that controls both normal cellular growth and the growth of cancerous cells.

In a paper in the , scientists at the 91爆料 show for the first time that the complex distribution of molecules within a membrane of a living yeast cell arises through demixing. Also known as phase separation, demixing is a simple physical process that is similar to the action that causes droplets of oil to separate from vinegar in a salad dressing.

“Cells have a toolbox with a variety of resources to help them complete a variety of tasks,” said senior author , a 91爆料 professor of chemistry. “By teaming up with , a 91爆料 professor of biochemistry and a yeast expert, we’ve shown that phase separation is one of those tools to shape membranes and their functions within a living system.”

The 91爆料 researchers were inspired by pictures of a genetically engineered strain of yeast in which membrane proteins fluorescently glowed. The proteins lit up intracellular, membrane-bound compartments called vacuoles. The vacuoles looked like miniature green balls patterned with dark polka dots. Those polka dots, the researchers realized, looked nearly identical to membrane regions that arise from phase separation in two types of non-living systems: simple, artificial membranes created in a lab and membranes shed from cells under severe stress.

“The membranes of living systems contain many different types of fats, proteins and other molecules,” said co-lead author , a lecturer at 91爆料 Tacoma who conducted this research when he was a 91爆料 doctoral student in chemistry. “Each of these types of molecules harbors different physical and chemical properties with the potential to affect the properties of the membrane as a whole. We and other groups have hypothesized that this variety of molecules would allow membranes to phase separate by composition into discrete regions.”

First, the team discovered that the polka dots that appear on vacuole membranes can merge quickly. This behavior is consistent with fluid phases, just as droplets in a recently-shaken oil and vinegar salad dressing quickly coalesce when they collide. Next, the team found that phase separation in the membranes of yeast vacuoles depends on temperature. When the researchers warmed the yeast above 90 degrees Fahrenheit, the two liquid phases merged into one 鈥斅爐he polka dots vanished. As the yeast cells were cooled back to room temperature, the phase-separated regions聽reappeared.

“Scientists had never previously shown that phase-separated liquids can co-exist in the membranes of living cells,” said co-lead author , a 91爆料 doctoral student in chemistry. “To show that phase separation occurs, we had to reliably track the distribution of proteins within membranes, show that they formed regions like in artificial systems and that these regions would merge in response to changing environmental conditions.”

Now that the researchers have shown that living membranes can undergo phase separation, future work is needed to show how cells regulate phase separation. This could be through the action of genes, environmental conditions or a combination of factors.

“Our finding that phase separation can drive membrane organization in yeast suggests that similar processes may operate in other cells, including human cells,” said Merz. “Again, we see the power of model systems such as yeast, fruit flies and worms in our exploration of fundamental physiology. 91爆料 has been at the forefront of yeast genetics and cell biology for over 60 years.”

“There is incredible potential here to unlock how different types of cells form and maintain unique structures 鈥� and how different structures are formed even within the same cell,” said Keller.

Caitlin Cornell, a 91爆料 doctoral student in chemistry, is a co-author. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

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For more information, contact Keller at skeller@chem.washington.edu or 206-543-9613 and Merz at merza@uw.edu or 206-616-8308.

Grant numbers: DGE-1256082, MCB-1402059, T32GM008268, GM077349.