Randy

Research Expertise and Interest

saccharomyces cerevisiae, organelle assembly, intracellular protein transport, assembly of cellular organelles, neurodegenrative disease(1551), regulation of lymphocyte development

Research Description

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.

In the News

$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.

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: 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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