Susan Lindquist was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Iver and Eleanor, and attended Maine South High School in Park Ridge.
15 Facts About Susan Lindquist
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Lindquist's father and mother were of Swedish and Italian descent, respectively, and although they expected her to become a housewife, Susan studied microbiology at the University of Illinois as an undergraduate and received her PhD in biology from Harvard University in 1976.
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Susan Lindquist completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the American Cancer Society.
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At the University of Chicago Susan Lindquist investigated the role of heat shock proteins in regulating the cellular response to environmental stresses.
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Susan Lindquist pioneered the use of yeast as a model system to study how heat shock proteins regulate gene expression and protein folding.
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In 2004, Lindquist resumed research as an Institute Member, an associate member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and an associate member of the David H Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT.
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Susan Lindquist was awarded the National Medal of Science in 2009, for research contributions to protein folding.
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Susan Lindquist lectured nationally and internationally on a variety of scientific topics.
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Susan Lindquist is best known for her research that provided strong evidence for a new paradigm in genetics based upon the inheritance of proteins with new, self-perpetuating shapes rather than new DNA sequences.
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Susan Lindquist was considered an expert in protein folding, which, as explained by Lindquist in the following excerpt, is an ancient, fundamental problem in biology:.
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Susan Lindquist worked on the PSI+ element in yeast and how it can act as a switch that hides or reveals numerous mutations throughout the genome, thus acting as an evolutionary capacitor.
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Susan Lindquist's lab investigates closely related evolutionary mechanisms involved in the progression of cancerous tumors and in the evolution of antibiotic-resistant fungi.
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Susan Lindquist made advances in nanotechnology, researching organic amyloid fibers capable of self-organizing into structures smaller than manufactured materials.
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Susan Lindquist was married to Edward Buckbee and had two daughters.
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Susan Lindquist died of cancer in Boston at the age of 67 on October 27,2016.