Randy Schekman | Research UC Berkeley

Research Bio

Schekman Labs' research is devoted to a molecular description of the process of membrane assembly and vesicular traffic in eukaryotic cells. Basic principles that emerged from these studies in yeast are now being applied to studies of genetic diseases of protein transport.

For the past dozen years, his lab has turned to a biochemical analysis of traffic in mammalian cells, including of the pathways of collagen secretion, autophagosome formation, and unconventional secretion. Of particular interest in clinical developments, he has decided to focus their attention on the mechanism of extracellular vesicle biogenesis with an emphasis on the means by which exosomes acquire a cell type-specific and highly sorted set of miRNAs. Another more recent interest is in the unconventional secretion of a protein implicated in Parkinson's Disease (PD), alpha-synuclein whose spread in the brain may be part of the pathology of PD

Research Expertise and Interest

saccharomyces cerevisiae, human cells, including stem cells, organelle assembly, intracellular protein transport, extracellular vesicles and exosomes, neurodegenrative disease(1551)

In the News

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How Looking Closely Led This Cell Biologist to World-Changing Breakthroughs

Hear Randy Schekman, a UC Berkeley professor of Molecular and Cell Biology, explain his Nobel Prize-winning work in just 101 seconds.

Alumnus David Julius shares Nobel Prize for work on pain receptors

David Julius, one of today’s winners of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, was a standout even as a graduate student at UC Berkeley in the 1970s and ’80s, according to one of his mentors, 2013 Nobel laureate Randy Schekman.

diagram of brain as mismatched puzzle pieces

$14 million boost for Parkinson’s disease research

Two new grants totaling nearly $14 million over three years will jump-start research at UC Berkeley into the molecular and genetic causes of Parkinson’s disease, a neurodegenerative disorder that afflicts more than 1 million Americans, yet whose cause remains a mystery.

Science, uninterrupted: Will COVID-19 mark the end of scientific publishing as we know it?

Under the pressure of a global health crisis, the argument for open access has sunk in. Following calls from the World Health Organization and government leaders, over 150 publishers, companies, and research institutions have agreed to temporarily make all content related to COVID-19 free to read, ensuring efforts to understand the virus can go forth undeterred.

Randy Schekman in blue suit sitting in front of a blackboard

Berkeley Talks: Nobel laureate Randy Schekman on new Parkinson’s research

On Sept. 17, UC Berkeley hosted the second annual Aging, Research and Technology Innovation Summit, a daylong event that brought together researchers, entrepreneurs, policymakers and health care workers to tackle some of the biggest questions in aging research. This year’s summit focused on the challenge of understanding and treating neurodegenerative diseases. Randy Schekman, a professor of molecular and cell biology at UC Berkeley, won the 2013 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. He spoke at the summit about Parkinson’s disease, touching on what we already know about the disease and new research efforts that are underway.

Randy Schekman sitting in front of drawing of yeast bud

Randy Schekman: Don’t put science ‘behind a paywall’

“Scientific research shouldn’t sit behind a paywall,” writes UC Berkeley professor Randy Schekman in a new op-ed in Scientific American. Discovery and research shouldn’t be inaccessible to those that need it—doctors, university scientists, for example — especially when the taxpayers fund the research, which is often the case for major projects, said Schekman, a professor of cell and developmental biology who won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 2013.

Schekman receives Nobel Medal in Stockholm ceremony

Newly minted Nobel Laureate Randy Schekman used his Nobel acceptance speech Dec. 10 in Stockholm to encourage more support for basic research, the “freedom of inquiry (that) nourished the careers of today’s Laureates.”

Randy Schekman awarded 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

Randy W. Schekman, professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley, has won the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his role in revealing the machinery that regulates the transport and secretion of proteins in our cells. He shares the prize with James E. Rothman of Yale University and Thomas C. Südhof of Stanford University.

Schekman to lead new journal launched by Howard Hughes institute

Cell biologist Randy Schekman, professor of molecular and cell biology and current editor of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has been named the first editor of a new journal that the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Max Planck Society, and the Wellcome Trust aim to launch next year.

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