Cell and Organelle Biology.
Studies in Dr. Lippincott-Schwartz's lab are focused on the mechanisms controlling the distribution, dynamics and biogenesis of eukaryotic organelles and the nature of the membrane transport pathways operating between them. A wide variety of fluorescent imaging techniques are used to understand how proteins in living cells are targeted to and retained within the endoplasmic reticulum, Golgi complex and nuclear envelope, how these organelles are inherited into daughter cells during mitosis and the properties of transport intermediates moving through the secretory pathway.
Biographical sketch:
Dr. Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz attended Swarthmore College graduating with honors in 1974. After several years of teaching high school sciences, both in Kenya and California, she turned to laboratory research working with Dr. Phil Hanwalt at Stanford University while receiving a Master's degree in Biology in 1979. Dr. Lippincot-Schwartz then entered the Ph.D Program in Biology at Johns Hopkins University. Her work there in the laboratory of Dr. Doug Fambrough revealed that lysosomal membrane proteins lead an itinerant life as they repeatedly cycle to the cell surface and back, though the lysosome itself serves to degrade cellular components. Following award of her doctoral degree in 1986, she continued her focus on membrane trafficking in the laboratory of Dr. Richard Klausner at NIH where she first identified a nonlysosomal pathway for degradation of proteins in the ER and later demonstrated a retrograde transport pathway for recycling of proteins from the Golgi complex to the ER using the drug brefeldin A. In 1992, she became Head of the Unit on Organelle Biology in the Cell Biology and Metabolism Branch of the NICHD at NIH. Her laboratory has pioneered the use of green fluorescent protein tags for the study of membrane protein traffic and its visualization within cells. Among the areas that her lab has focused on include the morphological and kinetic properties of secretory protein transport and the pathways for breakdown and reassembly of the nuclear envelope and Golgi apparatus during mitosis. Dr. Lippincott-Schwartz was recently named as the first Keith Porter Fellow, in honor of the late Keith Porter's achievments in cell biology. She was also awarded the Wellcome Visiting Professorship in the Basic Medical Sciences for the 1998-1999 academic year. Dr. Lippincott-Schwartz serves as Editor for Current Protocols in Cell Biology and The Journal of Cell Science and she is on the Editorial Boards of Molecular Biology of the Cell and Traffic. She is an active member of the cell biological community, serving as a member of the Council for the American Society of Cell Biology.