Dr. Randy Schekman is a Professor in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.  He studied the enzymology of DNA replication as a graduate student with Arthur Kornberg at Stanford University.  His current interest in cellular membranes developed during a postdoctoral period with S. J. Singer at the University of California, San Diego.  Schekman’s laboratory investigates the mechanism of membrane protein traffic in the secretory pathway in eukaryotic cells. In recent years his lab has turned to aspects of vesicular traffic in human cells, most recently on the biogenesis and sorting of small RNAs into extracellular vesicles.

Among his awards are the Gairdner International Award, the Albert Lasker Award in Basic Medical Research and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, which he shared with James Rothman and Thomas Südhof.  From 2006 – 2011 he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Proceedings of the NAS.  In 2011, he founded and until 2019 served as the Editor-in-Chief of the Open Access journal, eLife, sponsored by the HHMI, Wellcome Trust and the Max Planck Society.  Beginning in 2018, Schekman assumed a leadership role in an effort supported by the Sergey Brin Family Foundation to identify and support basic research on the mechanisms of Parkinson’s Disease initiation and progression (https://parkinsonsroadmap.org). 

Human cells manufacture over 20,000 different proteins which consist of amino acids stitched together to create the many molecules that catalyze and organize cellular processes.  Most of these proteins are designed to function within the cell but a significant fraction of them, molecules such as insulin, growth factors and collagen are shipped out by a process called secretion.