| Citation | Distinguished for her studies on the isolation, structure and function of coated vesicles from eukaryotic cells.
She developed novel methods to purify coated vesicles from various eukaryotic sources. She discovered clathrin, the protein which coats the vesicles on their cyctoplasmic surfaces, and found that it is composed of light and heavy chains. With others, she has now described how clathrin molecules from a basket-like structure and how clathrin interacts with different molecules (100 kd, 50 kd) on the surface of the vesicle. Also with others, she has shown that coated pits in the plasma membrane of fibroblasts act as "filters" and select specific molecules to enter the cell. Her work has opened up a new area in the biochemistry of endocytosis. |