Erin K. O'Shea is an American biologist who is president of the

Howard Hughes Medical Institute The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) is an American non-profit medical research organization based in Chevy Chase, Maryland. It was founded in 1953 by Howard Hughes, an American business magnate, investor, record-setting pilot, engineer, fil ...

(HHMI). In 2013, she was named HHMI's vice president and chief scientific officer. Prior to that, she was a professor of molecular and

cellular biology Cell biology (also cellular biology or cytology) is a branch of biology that studies the structure, function, and behavior of cells. All living organisms are made of cells. A cell is the basic unit of life that is responsible for the living and ...

and

chemistry Chemistry is the science, scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a natural science that covers the Chemical element, elements that make up matter to the chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions ...

and

chemical biology Chemical biology is a scientific discipline spanning the fields of chemistry and biology. The discipline involves the application of chemical techniques, analysis, and often small molecules produced through synthetic chemistry, to the study and ma ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

. In 2016, her appointment as future, and first woman, president of HHMI was announced. She has been a

(HHMI) investigator since 2000.

Early life and education

Erin O'Shea is one of five children, born in

Leroy, New York Le Roy, or more commonly LeRoy, is a town in Monroe County, New York or Genesee County, New York, United States. The population was 7,641 at the time of the 2010 census. The town is named after one of the original land owners, Herman Le Roy. Th ...

. O'Shea earned her AB in

biochemistry Biochemistry or biological chemistry is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology and ...

from

Smith College Smith College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts Women's colleges in the United States, women's college in Northampton, Massachusetts. It was chartered in 1871 by Sophia Smith (Smith College ...

in 1988 and her PhD in

from

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the mo ...

in 1992 at age 26 working with Peter S. Kim studying

leucine zippers A leucine zipper (or leucine scissors) is a common three-dimensional structural motif in proteins. They were first described by Landschulz and collaborators in 1988 when they found that an enhancer binding protein had a very characteristic 30-amin ...

. She was a postdoctoral fellow at

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

from 1992 to 1993.

Career and research

During her postdoctoral fellowship, O'Shea worked with

Robert Tjian Robert Tjian (; born 1949) is a Hong Kong-born American biochemist best known for his work on eukaryotic transcription. He is currently Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of California, Berkeley and an Investigator ...

and

Ira Herskowitz Ira Herskowitz (July 14, 1946 – April 28, 2003) was an American phage and yeast geneticist geneticist who studied genetic regulatory circuits and mechanisms. He was particularly noted for his work on mating type switching and cellular different ...

studying

chromatin Chromatin is a complex of DNA and protein found in eukaryotic cells. The primary function is to package long DNA molecules into more compact, denser structures. This prevents the strands from becoming tangled and also plays important roles in r ...

regulation of transcription in yeast. When she was joined by her graduate school colleague

Jonathan Weissman Jonathan S. Weissman is the Landon T. Clay Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a member of the Whitehead Institute, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. From 1996 to 2020, he was a faculty member in th ...

, they began to determine the location and abundance of all of the proteins in the yeast genome. They ultimately made two libraries both with GFP-fused protein with

tandem affinity purification Tandem affinity purification (TAP) is an immunoprecipitation-based purification technique for studying protein–protein interactions. The goal is to extract from a cell only the protein of interest, in complex with any other proteins it interacted ...

(TAP)-tags. After her PhD, O'Shea was briefly a Basic Research Fellow before joining the faculty of

University of California, San Francisco The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is a public land-grant research university in San Francisco, California. It is part of the University of California system and is dedicated entirely to health science and life science. It cond ...

as an assistant professor in 1993. In 2005, she was recruited to

to be the director of the (FAS) Center for Systems Biology and a professor of molecular and

and

. Her research is focused on gene regulation and the biology of a three-protein

circadian clock A circadian clock, or circadian oscillator, is a biochemical oscillator that cycles with a stable phase (waves), phase and is synchronized with solar time. Such a clock's ''in vivo'' period is necessarily almost exactly 24 hours (the earth's curre ...

. In 2012, she was elected to be HHMI's new Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer leading the HHMI Investigator Program succeeding Jack Dixon. She will continue to maintain her lab at Harvard.

Awards and honors

O'Shea was a

Packard Foundation The David and Lucile Packard Foundation is a private foundation that provides grants to not-for-profit organizations. It was created in 1964 by David Packard (co-founder of HP) and his wife Lucile Salter Packard. Following David Packard's death ...

Fellow in 1994, and won young investigator awards from the

American Society for Cell Biology The American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) is a professional society that was founded in 1960.NAS Award in Molecular Biology The NAS Award in Molecular Biology is awarded by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences "for recent notable discovery in molecular biology by a young scientist who is a citizen of the United States." It has been awarded annually since its inceptio ...

for "contributions to our understanding of signal transduction, regulation of protein movement into and out of the nucleus, and how phosphorylation controls protein activity". O'Shea was elected to the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

in 2004, as well as the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...

. She was elected a member of the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...

in 2019.

Personal life

O'Shea is married to Douglas Jeffery. In 2007, she said that she runs and wakeboards, and a large motivation to move to Harvard was for the chance to teach undergrads. She trained her dog, Zambo, from when he was a puppy. Zambo became national champion and then world champion in 2011, at the Universal World Sieger Championship in Austria.

References

External links

Harvard Academic BioO'Shea Lab website
{{DEFAULTSORT:OShea, Erin K. Living people American women biochemists Howard Hughes Medical Investigators Place of birth missing (living people) Year of birth missing (living people) Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Harvard University faculty Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science alumni Smith College alumni University of California, San Diego faculty Members of the American Philosophical Society Fellows of the American Academy of Microbiology American women academics 21st-century American women Chemists from New York (state)