Tania A. Baker
Tania A. Baker | |
---|---|
Alma mater | University of Wisconsin–Madison (B.S., 1983) Stanford University (Ph.D., 1988) |
Known for | Clp/HSP1000 ATPases |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Biochemistry |
Institutions | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
Doctoral advisor | Arthur Kornberg |
Tania A. Baker is an American biochemist who is a
Education
Tania Baker started her major research when she became a graduate student at Stanford University. When she arrived at Stanford, there had already been work done to isolate 25 different enzymes and proteins.[2] It had been determined that the role of these enzymes and proteins were to aid DNA replication at specific sequences found on the chromosome, but the individual role of each enzyme and protein had not yet been established. There had been tests to figure this out in vitro, but not in vivo. Baker eventually helped discover the sequential steps that each enzyme and protein performed in order to start DNA replication in vivo.[3] Baker performed this research during the time it took to get her master's and Ph.D.
Career
For her postdoctoral research, she worked with Kiyoshi Mizuuchi at the
Eventually, Baker left the National Institute of Health to work as an independent researcher at
Currently, most of Baker's work focuses on these unfoldases. She works specifically with the AAA+ unfoldase family and has done a lot of research on the ClpX unfoldase.[2] In addition to unfoldases, she looks at adaptors, which are proteins that aid the unfoldases. The AAA+ family of unfoldases is in all organisms and plays an important role in maintaining which proteins are active within a cell.[6] Unfoldases help to destroy proteins that have become damaged or proteins that have built up too much. They are important in ensuring that proteins are properly recycled so that cells do not constantly need new amino acids. Baker wants to figure how unfoldases work and how they are controlled by cells.[2]
References
- ^ a b "Tania Baker named head of the Department of Biology". 28 February 2012. Retrieved 3 August 2012.
- ^ a b c d e f g h "Tania A. Baker, Ph.D." Howard Hughes Medical Institute. 2015. Retrieved 14 Apr 2015.
- ^ "Enzymes and DNA replication" (PDF). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. Retrieved 14 Apr 2015.
- ^ Baker, Tania. "Mu transposons and similarity to bacteria resistance transposons" (PDF). Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. Retrieved 14 April 2015.
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