The Molecules of Life (PDF)

John Kuriyan is Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology and of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. He began his career at Rockefeller University, New York and has been an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 1990. His laboratory uses x-ray crystallography to determine the three-dimensional structures of proteins involved in signaling and replication, as well as biochemical, biophysical, and computational analyses to elucidate mechanisms. Kuriyan was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences in 2001.

Boyana Konforti is the launch Editor of Cell Reports, an open-access journal focused on short papers in biology. Konforti earned her PhD at Stanford University in the Biochemistry Department with Ronald W. Davis studying the mechanism of DNA recombination. Her postdoctoral studies at Rockefeller University with Magda Konarska and Columbia University with Anna Pyle were on the mechanisms of RNA splicing. Konforti has been a professional editor for over 13 years; most recently she was Chief Editor of Nature Structural & Molecular Biology.

David Wemmer is Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley and has served as Vice Chair, Assistant Dean, and Executive Associate Dean since joining the faculty in 1985. His research in structural biology uses magnetic resonance methods to investigate the structure of proteins and DNA toward a better understanding of how these molecules function. Systems studied include DNA-ligand complexes, covalent DNA adducts, protein-DNA complexes, and diverse proteins involved in cellular regulatory processes. Wemmer is a Fellow of the AAAS and a member of Phi Kappa Phi and Sigma Xi.