User:Lwpatte/Susan Gottesman

In fifth or sixth grade, Gottesman was given a book titled Microbe Hunters. This book inspired her scientific career as she became fascinated with the importance and puzzling nature of scientific research.

She continued her curiosity in science by attending a summer program in high school. It was a research opportunity held at Waldemar in Long Island, New York. Gottesman attributed this opportunity to the emphasis on science and technology during the Cold War. This experience helped fuel her passion for science, as she was introduced to genetics, DNA, cancer, and bacteria.

Gottesman was a graduate student at Harvard in the 1960's and worked with Jon Beckwith. Their worked involved studying the lac operon to further understand the E. coli arabinose operon. From their research, they were able to show that a transducing bacteriophage could work for the arabinose operon. Previous studies had only shown success in the lac operon, but the lambda phage was successful for the arabinose operon in her testing. Gottesman's later research at the National Institutes of Health used this lambda phage to understand how bacteriophages are able to insert themselves into a bacterial chromosome and then subsequently remove themselves.

Susan Gottesman is known for her work with small RNAs and ATP-dependent proteases. Her work in these subjects has been celebrated by scientists such as Princeton University professor Thomas Silhavy and former Princeton professor David Botstein. Gottesman focused her research on E. coli cells and the process of gene regulation. She began studying the mechanism for energy-dependent proteolysis, but stumbled upon small RNAs in the process. Small RNA are short RNA sequences that have a wide variety of functions within cells. They have been shown to be vital in cell processes such as growth, cell differentiation, and defense. The small RNAs have also been shown to be a factor in certain diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and liver disease.

The ATP-dependent proteases are shown to maintain the level of regulatory proteins and to get rid of any misfolded or damaged proteins. They bind to their specific substrates by sequence recognition or by chemical and conformation interactions.

In Gottesman's studies, she showed that the ATP-dependent proteases are regulated by the delivery of their substrate molecules by anti-adaptor and adaptor protein. This finding has been shown of specific importance in the study of bacterial general stress response. Along with the ATP-dependent proteases, the small RNA molecules are an important part of this response.

For example, one of these small RNAs in Gottesman's research was found to positively regulate the translation of RpoS, a stress sigma factor of E. coli. The DsrA small RNA helps to translate the RpoS factor by binding to the RpoS leader sequence.


 * 2017 Herbert Tabor Research Award from the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
 * Keynote Speaker at the Boston Bacterial Meeting 2017.
 * Keynote Speaker at the 6th Molecular Microbiology Meeting at Newcastle University, June, 2019.
 * Appointed to be a Vallee Visiting Professor for 2019 by the Vallee Foundation.