Susan Ferro-Novick

University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, La Jolla, California ~Distinguished Professor of Cellular and Molecular Medicine. Research focuses on vesicle traffic. Identified a protein complex called transport protein particle (TRAPP) that is needed for trafficking vesicles between the endoplasmic reticulum and Golgi in yeast, and developed a technique to select yeast secretion mutants defective in attachment of Golgi-specific carbohydrate. Discovered that mutants blocked early in secretion yield genes that identify important proteins with functional equivalents in mammalian cells. Found that one such gene, bet2, encodes an enzyme that attaches a polyisoprenoid group to small GTPases; another, bet3, encodes a subunit of a vesicle-targeting complex, TRAPP, essential for establishing vesicle identity. Using genetic and biochemical reconstitution approaches, identified further roles for the  TRAPP complex in tethering vesicles to a target membrane.~~~