James Rothman

SNARE proteins are molecules found on the surfaces of both vesicles (v-SNAREs) and target membranes (t-SNAREs) that lock together like a zipper to fuse the vesicle with its destination. Rothman identified these proteins through in vitro reconstitution experiments in the 1990s, showing that this specific protein-pairing mechanism determines which vesicle fuses with which compartment.

Rothman shared the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Randy Schekman of UC Berkeley and Thomas Südhof of Stanford University. Schekman was recognized for discovering the genes that control vesicle transport, Südhof for showing how vesicles release their contents precisely when nerve signals arrive, and Rothman for identifying the protein machinery that allows vesicles to dock and fuse.

Cells must move proteins and other molecules between organelles, to the cell surface, and outside the cell inside tiny membrane sacs called vesicles, and the question was how these vesicles know exactly where to deliver their cargo. Rothman showed that the specificity of delivery is encoded by the physical pairing of complementary SNARE proteins on the vesicle and its target membrane.

Rothman has held positions at several major institutions, including Stanford University, Princeton University, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Columbia University, and Yale University. His SNARE protein work spanned multiple institutions, with much of the key research conducted during his time at Memorial Sloan-Kettering and later at Yale.