Randy Schekman

Schekman used baker's yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) to identify a class of genes, called SEC genes, that are required for vesicles to form inside the cell and to transport proteins to their correct destinations. By studying yeast mutants that accumulated vesicles in the wrong places, he established the genetic blueprint for the cell's secretory transport system.

Schekman shared the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with James Rothman of Yale University and Thomas Südhof of Stanford University. Schekman was recognized for the genetic basis of vesicle transport, Rothman for the protein machinery (SNARE proteins) that fuses vesicles with target membranes, and Südhof for the calcium-triggered mechanisms that control neurotransmitter release at synapses.

Schekman is a professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has spent most of his career. He also served as editor-in-chief of the journal eLife and was previously editor-in-chief of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), making him a prominent advocate for open-access scientific publishing.

Yeast offered two key advantages: the ability to easily generate and screen thousands of mutants, and a well-understood genetics system that made it possible to pinpoint which genes were essential for each step of transport. Many of the SEC genes Schekman identified in yeast have direct counterparts in human cells, showing that the vesicle transport machinery is evolutionarily conserved.