Abbott-American Society for Microbiology (ASM) Lifetime Achievement Award to Stanford’s Lucy Shapiro

Summary

The 2010 Abbott-ASM Lifetime Achievement Award, ASM’s premier award for sustained contributions to the microbiological sciences will be presented to Lucy Shapiro, Director, Beckman Center for Molecular and Genetic Medicine, Stanford University. For three decades Shapiro has studied Caulobacter cresentus, a microbe that tolerates high concentrations of uranium and other heavy metals and could play a role in contaminant remediation. Research with C. cresentus provides the most thorough understanding of the cell cycle in any bacterium, critical to understanding all aspects of its physiology. Shapiro’s research has shown that the cell is an integrated system in which its transcriptional circuitry is interwoven with the three-dimensional deployment of key regulatory and morphological proteins. The award will be presented at the annual ASM meeting in San Diego, California May 23 – 27, 2010. Shapiro’s work has been supported in recent years by DOE’s Genomic Science Program.