Announcements: Kudos

Jenny Hinshaw honored with 2024 Sir Bernard Katz Award

Jenny Hinshaw, chief of the Structural Cell Biology Section at NIDDK, has been honored with the 2024 Sir Bernard Katz Award for her significant contributions to the field of Membrane Biology. This prestigious award, named after Sir Bernard Katz, one of the recipients of the 1970 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology, acknowledges Hinshaw's outstanding research in membrane fusion, fission, and traffic.

Hinshaw's groundbreaking work focuses on unraveling the mechanisms underlying the assembly and conformational changes of the dynamin protein family. Her research sheds light on essential cellular processes like endocytosis and organelle division and fusion.

Utilizing advanced cryo-electron microscopy techniques, Hinshaw has deciphered numerous structural configurations of dynamin family proteins. These discoveries have provided crucial insights into the internalization of vesicles from the plasma membrane during endocytosis and the role of OPA1, a dynamin family member, in inner mitochondrial membrane fusion. Mutations in OPA1 are linked to dominant optic atrophy, the primary cause of childhood blindness. Hinshaw’s work provided clues to how several of the OPA1 mutants lead to disease phenotypes.