Straight talk with... Carolyn Bertozzi. Interview by Roxanne Palmer.
Last month, Carolyn Bertozzi became the first woman to win the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)-Lemelson Prize, a $500,000 award that honors midcareer inventors. Bertozzi, a chemical biologist, works to understand how sugars mediate cell-to-cell communication. But she isn't content with just observing the process; her lab at the University of California-Berkeley has pioneered tools for labeling molecules inside living cells. Her biomedical inventions have contributed to the development of noninvasive methods for identifying disease tissue within the body-advances that could revolutionize both the diagnosis and the treatment of a host of diseases ranging from arthritis to cancer. Roxanne Palmer recently caught up with her by phone to discuss Bertozzi's sweet success with cell surface sugars.
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D001363:Awards and Prizes; D020811:Biomedical Technology; D002450:Cell Communication; D002462:Cell Membrane / Q000378:metabolism; D002621:Chemistry / Q000266:history; D049674:History, 21st Century; D011134:Polysaccharides / Q000096:biosynthesis; D015202:Protein Engineering
D011134:Polysaccharides