About this Research Topic
This article collection is dedicated to the memory and legacy of Professor Susan (Sue) Lindquist, a pioneer in the field of Protein Folding.
Susan Lindquist demonstrated through her visionary experiments in yeast, plants, flies and human cells how protein folding fuels evolution. During her remarkable career she connected concepts across disciplines and her insights have paved the way for understanding and innovative treatment of protein-folding diseases, including neurodegeneration and cancer.
Born in Chicago, Sue was a college student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a graduate student at Harvard University, and earned her PhD in 1976 at the University of Chicago, where she became a faculty member and established her first lab. In 2001, she joined the biology department faculty at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at MIT in Cambridge, MA, and became the first female Director of the Institute from 2001 to 2004. She remained a member of the Whitehead Institute, an associate member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, an associate member of the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, and a biology professor at MIT for the rest of her career.
Susan Lindquist was a steadfast advocate for the brave inquiry of important societal problems and transparent communication of scientific research. In her papers, she used language that was accessible to wide audiences and many of her papers on protein-based mechanisms of evolution in model organisms are considered classics today.
She valued diversity and believed in its’ creative power. As such, she brought together basic and applied scientists, physicians, mathematicians, biologists, and chemists. During her 15-year career at the Whitehead Institute alone, she was a dedicated mentor to over 100 postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and undergraduates, many of them women, guiding them to productive careers in research.
In honor of Susan Lindquist’s contributions to the field, Frontiers in Molecular Biosciences is proud to offer this platform to promote novel contributions building on her findings. In support of her unwavering commitment to promoting women in science, which is memorialized by the Whitehead Institute Fund to Encourage Women in Science, we would like to encourage contributions including at least one co-author who identifies as a woman.
We welcome submissions covering, but not limited to, the following themes to which Susan Lindquist contributed to significantly:
1. The heat shock response
2. Hsp90 biology
3. Chaperone-mediated disaggregation
4. Prion in health and disease
5. Protein misfolding diseases
6. Chaperoning cancer
7. Protein homeostasis and genetic diversity
8. Structure analysis of metastable proteins
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
Susan Lindquist demonstrated through her visionary experiments in yeast, plants, flies and human cells how protein folding fuels evolution. During her remarkable career she connected concepts across disciplines and her insights have paved the way for understanding and innovative treatment of protein-folding diseases, including neurodegeneration and cancer.
Born in Chicago, Sue was a college student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a graduate student at Harvard University, and earned her PhD in 1976 at the University of Chicago, where she became a faculty member and established her first lab. In 2001, she joined the biology department faculty at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at MIT in Cambridge, MA, and became the first female Director of the Institute from 2001 to 2004. She remained a member of the Whitehead Institute, an associate member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, an associate member of the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, and a biology professor at MIT for the rest of her career.
Susan Lindquist was a steadfast advocate for the brave inquiry of important societal problems and transparent communication of scientific research. In her papers, she used language that was accessible to wide audiences and many of her papers on protein-based mechanisms of evolution in model organisms are considered classics today.
She valued diversity and believed in its’ creative power. As such, she brought together basic and applied scientists, physicians, mathematicians, biologists, and chemists. During her 15-year career at the Whitehead Institute alone, she was a dedicated mentor to over 100 postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and undergraduates, many of them women, guiding them to productive careers in research.
In honor of Susan Lindquist’s contributions to the field, Frontiers in Molecular Biosciences is proud to offer this platform to promote novel contributions building on her findings. In support of her unwavering commitment to promoting women in science, which is memorialized by the Whitehead Institute Fund to Encourage Women in Science, we would like to encourage contributions including at least one co-author who identifies as a woman.
We welcome submissions covering, but not limited to, the following themes to which Susan Lindquist contributed to significantly:
1. The heat shock response
2. Hsp90 biology
3. Chaperone-mediated disaggregation
4. Prion in health and disease
5. Protein misfolding diseases
6. Chaperoning cancer
7. Protein homeostasis and genetic diversity
8. Structure analysis of metastable proteins
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
Keywords: Women, STEM, Diversity, protein, protein folding, misfolding, degradation
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
