Eva Nogales (born May 16, 1965) is a Spanish-American

biophysicist Biophysics is an interdisciplinary science that applies approaches and methods traditionally used in physics to study biological phenomena. Biophysics covers all scales of biological organization, from molecular to organismic and populations ...

at the

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL, Berkeley Lab) is a Federally funded research and development centers, federally funded research and development center in the Berkeley Hills, hills of Berkeley, California, United States. Established i ...

and a professor at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

, where she served as head of the Division of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Structural Biology of the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology (2015–2020). She is a

Howard Hughes Medical Institute The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) is an American non-profit medical research organization headquartered in Chevy Chase, Maryland with additional facilities in Ashburn, Virginia. It was founded in 1953 by Howard Hughes, an American busin ...

investigator. Nogales is a pioneer in using

electron microscopy An electron microscope is a microscope that uses a beam of electrons as a source of illumination. It uses electron optics that are analogous to the glass lenses of an optical light microscope to control the electron beam, for instance focusing i ...

for the structural and functional characterization of macromolecular complexes. She used

electron crystallography Electron crystallography is a subset of methods in electron diffraction focusing upon detailed determination of the positions of atoms in solids using a transmission electron microscope (TEM). It can involve the use of high-resolution transmissi ...

to obtain the first structure of

tubulin Tubulin in molecular biology can refer either to the tubulin protein superfamily of globular proteins, or one of the member proteins of that superfamily. α- and β-tubulins polymerize into microtubules, a major component of the eukaryotic cytosk ...

and identify the binding site of the important anti-cancer drug

taxol Paclitaxel, sold under the brand name Taxol among others, is a chemotherapy medication used to treat ovarian cancer, esophageal cancer, breast cancer, lung cancer, Kaposi's sarcoma, cervical cancer, and pancreatic cancer. It is administered by ...

. She is a leader in combining

cryo-EM Cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) is a transmission electron microscopy technique applied to samples cooled to cryogenic temperatures. For biological specimens, the structure is preserved by embedding in an environment of vitreous ice. An ...

, computational image analysis and biochemical assays to gain insights into function and regulation of biological complexes and

molecular machine Molecular machines are a class of molecules typically described as an assembly of a discrete number of molecular components intended to produce mechanical movements in response to specific stimuli, mimicking macromolecular devices such as switch ...

s. Her work has uncovered aspects of cellular function that are relevant to the treatment of cancer and other diseases.

Early life and education

Eva Nogales obtained her BS degree in physics from the

Autonomous University of Madrid The Autonomous University of Madrid (; UAM), commonly known as la Autónoma, is a Spanish public university located in Madrid, Spain. The university was founded in 1968 by royal decree. UAM is widely respected as one of the most prestigious univ ...

in 1988. She later earned her PhD from the

University of Keele Keele University is a public research university in Keele, approximately from Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, England. Founded in 1949 as the University College of North Staffordshire, it was granted university status by Royal Charter as ...

in 1992 while working at the Synchrotron Radiation Source under the supervision of Joan Bordas.

Career

During her post-doctoral work in the laboratory of Ken Downing at the

, Eva Nogales was the first to determine the atomic structure of

and the location of the taxol-binding site by

. She became an assistant professor in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at the

in 1998. In 2000 she became an investigator in the

. As

techniques became more powerful, she became a leader in applying cryo-EM to the study of microtubule structure and function and other large

macromolecular assemblies In molecular biology, the term macromolecular assembly (MA) refers to massive chemical structures such as viruses and non-biologic nanoparticles, cellular organelles and cell membrane, membranes and ribosomes, etc. that are complex mixtures of p ...

such as

eukaryotic transcription Eukaryotic transcription is the elaborate process that eukaryotic cells use to copy genetic information stored in DNA into units of transportable complementary RNA replica. Gene transcription occurs in both eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells. Un ...

and translation initiation complexes, the polycomb complex PRC2, and

telomerase Telomerase, also called terminal transferase, is a ribonucleoprotein that adds a species-dependent telomere repeat sequence to the 3' end of telomeres. A telomere is a region of repetitive sequences at each end of the chromosomes of most euka ...

Selected publications

* * *

Awards

* 2000: investigator,

* 2005: Early Career Life Scientist Award,

American Society for Cell Biology The American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) is a professional society that was founded in 1960.Protein Society * 2015: Elected as a member of the US

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

* 2016: Elected to the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...

* 2018: Women in Cell Biology Award (Senior),

American Society for Cell Biology The American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) is a professional society that was founded in 1960.AAAS Fellow Fellowship of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (FAAAS) is an honor accorded by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) to distinguished persons who are members of the Association. Fellows are elected ...

s Award. * 2023:

Shaw Prize The Shaw Prize is a set of three annual awards presented by the Shaw Prize Foundation in the fields of astronomy, medicine and life sciences, and mathematical sciences. Established in 2002 in Hong Kong, by Hong Kong entertainment mogul and p ...

in Life Sciences. * 2025: Foreign Member of the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

Personal life

Nogales is married to Howard Padmore and they have two children.

References

External links

Molecules in motion

Nogales lab
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nogales, Eva Howard Hughes Medical Investigators Living people Molecular biologists Spanish biophysicists Women biophysicists Biophysicists Spanish emigrants to the United States University of California, Berkeley faculty American women biologists 21st-century American women scientists Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Alumni of Keele University Autonomous University of Madrid alumni Structural biologists 1965 births Foreign members of the Royal Society