Cell biologist honored for membrane protein research

Debra A. Kendall, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology and associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, has been elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

The AAAS is the world’s largest general scientific society. It is the publisher of the journal Science.

Kendall’s research focuses on cellular activities that take place at the cell membrane, an area of study that has grown rapidly in the past decade, as scientists learn how information is transmitted from outside to inside the cell. That information can determine how drugs and therapeutic treatments are designed.

She was cited by the AAAS “for distinguished contributions to the field of membrane protein biochemistry, particularly for advances in protein transport and signal transduction systems.”

Developing new strategies
Her large research program at UConn is funded primarily by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). She has received 24 years of uninterrupted funding from the NIH, and last year brought in $3 million in research grants to UConn. She also has been the recipient of a National Science Foundation Career Advancement Award.

She collaborates widely with other researchers at UConn, Yale, Dartmouth, and in the Netherlands and France.

“The research questions have demanded that we develop new approaches, new techniques, new strategies,” she says. “I’ve been extraordinarily fortunate to have good collaborators. We help each other out in all sorts of ways.”

One of the challenges of her research in a fast-moving area is developing strategies to study the proteins that she is interested in. Membrane proteins are not water soluble, as are most proteins. Most research methodologies were developed for water-soluble proteins.

In recent years, when scientists began to realize that the cell membrane was far more than just a barrier, new techniques have been sought to study the biological activities that take place at the membrane.

Potential applications
Membrane proteins are critical in cell-to-cell communication and to the selective passage of material and information. They act as “sensors” of what is outside the cell, transferring that information inside, and they are the primary site of contact for infection and for secretions of the immune system that fight infection.