American biochemist
Susan Taylor (born 1942[1]) is an American biochemist who is a Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry and a Professor of Pharmacology at the University of California, San Diego. She is known for her research on protein kinases, particularly protein kinase A.[2] She was elected to the Institute of Medicine and the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1996.[3][4]
Early life and education
Taylor was born in 1942 in Racine, Wisconsin.[1] She attended the University of Wisconsin as an undergraduate and received a B.A. in biochemistry in 1964. Despite originally planning for a career as a medical doctor, she received her PhD in physiological chemistry from Johns Hopkins University in 1968 and then worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, where she has said she settled on a career in research science.[5] After returning to the United States, she worked as a postdoc at the University of California, San Diego.[1][2]
Academic career
After a brief postdoc position at UCSD, Taylor joined the faculty there in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry in 1972 and became a full professor in 1985.[1] She was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator from 1997 to 2014.[6]
Taylor served on the editorial board of the Journal of Biological Chemistry from 1985-1990 and served a term as the president of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in 1995.[2]
Research
Taylor's research group has focused on the structure and function of protein kinases, particularly protein kinase A, since shortly after she began her independent research career.[1] Her group, collaborating with Janusz Sowadski, was the first to solve the crystal structure of a protein kinase when they reported the structure of PKA in 1991.[7] The group has subsequently published a number of papers on the dynamics and mechanism of PKA, or cyclic AMP-dependent protein kinase.[8][9][10]
