Schekman was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, to Alfred Schekman, an electrical engineer and computer software designer and Esther (Bader) Schekman.[14] His family were Jewish emigrants from Russia and Bessarabia.[15] In the late 1950s his family moved to the new suburban community of Rossmoor, located in Orange County next to Long Beach. He graduated from Western High School in Anaheim, California, in 1966.[16] He received a BA in molecular biology from the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA), in 1971. He spent his third year at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, as an exchange student.[4][17] He received a PhD in 1975 from Stanford University for research on DNA replication working with Arthur Kornberg.[18] After joining the faculty at University of California Berkeley, he was promoted to associate professor in 1981 and Professor in 1984.
Research and career
Since 1991, Schekman has been a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator,[19] division of biochemistry and molecular biology, department of molecular and cell biology, at the University of California, Berkeley. The Schekman Lab at that university carries out research into molecular descriptions of the process of membrane assembly and vesicular traffic[20] in eukaryotic cells[21][22] including yeast.[23] Before that, he was a faculty member with the now disbanded Department of Biochemistry at the same university.
Using a brilliantly conceived genetic screen, Schekman isolated sec mutants that accumulate secretory pathway intermediates, he cloned the corresponding genes and he established biochemical reactions that faithfully reproduced specific secretory pathway events. These studies transformed the secretion field, previously descriptive and morphological, into a molecular and mechanistic one. The cell-free reactions that Schekman established led to his isolation of the Sec61 translocation complex, the (COPII) vesicle coat complex, and the first purified inter-organelle transport vesicles. The Sec proteins are strikingly conserved and the trafficking mechanisms that Schekman discovered are at the heart of neurotransmission, hormone secretion, cholesterol homeostasis and metabolic regulation.[1]
Schekman, Thomas C. Südhof, and James Rothman were awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries of machinery regulating vesicle traffic, a major transport system in our cells".[12] Schekman donated his share of the prize money, $400,000, to create an endowment for the Esther and Wendy Schekman Chair in Basic Cancer Biology at UC Berkeley. Schekman's mother and sister, for whom the post is named, both died of cancer.[28]
In 2021, Professor Randy Schekman was elected honorary member of the Academy of Sciences of Moldova, with which he has been collaborating since 2019. [30]
In 2023, he was awarded the title of Doctor Honoris Causa at Nicolae Testemitanu State University of Medicine and Pharmacy of the Republic of Moldova. [31][32]
Open-access science
In December 2013, Schekman called for academic journal publishing reform and open access science publication by announcing that his lab at the University of California, Berkeley would no longer submit to the prestigious closed-access journals Nature, Cell, and Science, citing their self-serving and deleterious effects on science.[33] He has criticized these journals for artificially restricting the number of publications accepted to drive up demand.[33] In addition, Schekman says the journals accept papers that will be cited often, increasing the prestige of the journal, rather than those which demonstrate important results.[33] Schekman has said the prestige and difficulty of publishing in these journals sometimes cause scientists to cut corners or pursue trends, rather than conduct research on important questions. Schekman is the former editor of eLife, an open access journal and competitor to Nature, Cell, and Science.[33] Papers are accepted into eLife based on review by working scientists.[33] Access to accepted papers is free.[33]
Parkinson's Disease
In the fall of 2017, Schekman's wife, Nancy Walls, died after a 20-year struggle with Parkinson's disease. Near the end of this difficult period Schekman was enlisted to serve as the scientific director of a new effort called ASAP aimed at organizing an international program of collaborative research on the origins and mechanisms of progression of Parkin's Disease. In cooperation with The Michael J. Fox Foundation and major philanthropic support, ASAP has grown by 2022 to involve 35 teams across 165 laboratories around the world. The goal of ASAP is bridge the talents of hundreds of scientists to develop novel insights leading to more effective treatments of this disease.
^Schekman, Randy Wayne (1975). Resolution and Reconstruction of a multienzyme DNA replication reaction (1975) (PhD thesis). Stanford University. ProQuest302775556.