John Kuriyan is the Dean of Basic Sciences and a Professor of Biochemistry at

Vanderbilt University School of Medicine Vanderbilt University School of Medicine is a graduate medical school of Vanderbilt University located in Nashville, Tennessee. Located in the Vanderbilt University Medical Center on the southeastern side of the Vanderbilt University campus, the ...

. He was formerly the Chancellor's Professor at the

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 ...

in the departments of Molecular and Cell Biology (MCB) and Chemistry, a Faculty Scientist in

Berkeley Lab Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), commonly referred to as the Berkeley Lab, is a United States Department of Energy National Labs, United States national laboratory that is owned by, and conducts scientific research on behalf of, t ...

's Physical Biosciences Division, and a

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 ...

investigator. He is a member of 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 ...

and he has also been on the Life Sciences jury for the

Infosys Prize The Infosys Prize is an annual award given to scientists, researchers, engineers and social scientists of Indian origin (not necessarily born in India) by the Infosys Science Foundation and ranks among the highest monetary awards in India to re ...

in 2009, 2019 and 2020.

Education

Kuriyan received his B.S. in chemistry from

Juniata College Juniata College is a private liberal arts college in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1876 as a co-educational school, it was the first college started by members of the Church of the Brethren as a center for vocational learning for those wh ...

in Pennsylvania, followed by his PhD in physical chemistry at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology 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 ...

supervised by

Gregory Petsko Gregory A. Petsko (born August 7, 1948) is an American biochemist and member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. He is currentl ...

and

Martin Karplus Martin Karplus (born March 15, 1930) is an Austrian and American theoretical chemist. He is the Director of the Biophysical Chemistry Laboratory, a joint laboratory between the French National Center for Scientific Research and the University of St ...

Research and career

Kuriyan did

postdoctoral research A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). The ultimate goal of a postdoctoral research position is to p ...

work for one year supervised by Karplus at

Harvard 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 ...

before becoming an assistant professor at the

Rockefeller University The Rockefeller University is a private biomedical research and graduate-only university in New York City, New York. It focuses primarily on the biological and medical sciences and provides doctoral and postdoctoral education. It is classif ...

. Kuriyan's laboratory studies the structure and mechanism of enzymes and other proteins that transduce cellular signals and perform

DNA replication In molecular biology, DNA replication is the biological process of producing two identical replicas of DNA from one original DNA molecule. DNA replication occurs in all living organisms acting as the most essential part for biological inheritanc ...

. The laboratory primarily uses

x-ray crystallography X-ray crystallography is the experimental science determining the atomic and molecular structure of a crystal, in which the crystalline structure causes a beam of incident X-rays to diffract into many specific directions. By measuring the angles ...

to determine 3-D protein structures as well as biochemical, biophysical, and computational techniques to uncover the mechanisms used by these proteins.

Awards and honors

In 1989, Kuriyan was named a Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences, and was the recipient of the 2005 Loundsbery Award by the

, . He has also received the Cornelius Rhoads Memorial Award from the

American Association for Cancer Research The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) is the world's oldest and largest professional association related to cancer research. Based in Philadelphia, the AACR focuses on all aspects of cancer research, including basic, clinical, and t ...

(1999), the

Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry The Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry was established in 1934. Consisting of a bronze medal and honorarium, its purpose is to stimulate fundamental research in biological chemistry by scientists not over thirty-eight years of age. The Award i ...

of the

American Chemical Society The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a scientific society based in the United States that supports scientific inquiry in the field of chemistry. Founded in 1876 at New York University, the ACS currently has more than 155,000 members at all d ...

(1998), the Dupont-Merck Award of the Protein Society (1997), and the Schering-Plough Award of the

American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) is a learned society that was founded on December 26, 1906, at a meeting organized by John Jacob Abel (Johns Hopkins University). The roots of the society were in the American Phy ...

(1994). In 2009 he received the ASBMB Merck award for his contributions to structural biology. Kuriyan was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 2015. He was elected to the

National Academy of Medicine The National Academy of Medicine (NAM), formerly called the Institute of Medicine (IoM) until 2015, is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Medicine is a part of the National Academies of Sciences, En ...

in 2018.

Books

* ''The molecules of life: physical and chemical principles'' with Konforti, Boyana; Wemmer, David (2013) * ''Mechanisms of RAS activation at the membrane'' (2006)

Publications

* Crystallographic R factor refinement by molecular dynamics * Structural mechanism for STI-571 inhibition of abelson tyrosine kinase * Multiple BCR-ABL kinase domain mutations confer polyclonal resistance to the tyrosine kinase inhibitor imatinib (STI571) in chronic phase and blast crisis chronic myeloid leukemia * The conformational plasticity of protein kinases * An allosteric mechanism for activation of the kinase domain of epidermal growth factor receptor

References

Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American molecular biologists UC Berkeley College of Chemistry faculty Harvard University people Howard Hughes Medical Investigators Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences American crystallographers American biochemists Foreign Members of the Royal Society Richard-Lounsbery Award laureates Members of the National Academy of Medicine {{US-biochemist-stub