SUSAN LINDQUIST
Professor, Department of Biology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Member and former director,
Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigatorWHITEHEAD INSTITUTE FOR BIOMEDICAL RESEARCHAs a junior faculty member at the University of Chicago in the late 1970s, Susan Lindquist heard about a new system for knocking out yeast genes, developed by Terry Orr-Weaver, Jack Szostak, and Rodney Rothstein. “I thought, ‘Wow, you could knock out genes; that is really powerful.’ So I decided I would work on yeast,” says Lindquist, a professor in the biology department at MIT and a member (and former director) of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
At the time, Lindquist was studying the heat-shock response in Drosophila melanogaster using fly-cell tissue cultures. A more senior colleague, yeast geneticist Rochelle Esposito, took Lindquist aside and gave her some advice. “She said that she didn’t normally interfere, but wanted to tell me that it was really risky to switch organisms before getting tenure,” recalls Lindquist, who appreciated the advice, particularly at a time when female professors received little mentoring. But, that risk didn’t scare Lindquist—because she had never dreamed of being able to become a tenured professor. “I thought it was a miracle that I got this faculty appointment and was so happy to be there for a few years that I just wanted to follow what was exciting for me. I didn’t ...
