Kate Carroll

• Faculty Spotlight

Through her graduate and postdoctoral studies, Kate Carroll has gained extensive training in biology and chemistry. During her graduate studies in the Stanford Biochemistry Department, Professor Carroll obtained rigorous training in mechanistic enzymology from Professor Dan Herschlag, where she investigated general principles of enzymatic catalysis using small-molecule model systems, as well as probing the catalytic mechanism of the Tetrahymena ribozyme. Both projects strengthened her skills in the areas of physical organic chemistry and quantitative analysis.

Subsequently, Professor Carroll applied these concepts to dissect a complex biological process as an American Heart Association fellow in her thesis laboratory with Professor Suzanne Pfeffer where she investigated the selectivity mechanisms of vesicle cargo selection and protein transport. Carroll's results were published in Science and provided the first molecular details for how different transport machineries recognize a single receptor depending on their intracellular location.

Supported by the prestigious Damon Runyon postdoctoral fellowship in Professor Carolyn Bertozzi's laboratory in the Chemistry Department at U. C. Berkeley, Carroll's work placed special emphasis in the areas of chemical synthesis and mass spectrometry applied to biological systems. This work, which Carroll continues in her new capacity as assistant research professor at the Life Sciences Institute, focuses on host-pathogen interaction mechanisms and the induction of metabolic pathways in Mycobacterium tuberculosis that allow the organism to replicate and persist in its human host.

A central goal of Carroll's work is to understand the roles that sulfur-containing metabolites play in bacterial survival and to investigate the biosynthetic machinery associated with these critical metabolites as new targets for anti-tuberculosis therapy. In addition to her work on sulfur metabolism, Carroll is also developing new chemical tools to identify and study oxidative post-translational modifications associated with age and neurodegenerative diseases. Carroll was recently honored with a Special Fellow Award from the Leukemia and Lymphoma Association to help support this project.