Leemor Joshua-Tor (

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

: לימור יהושע-תור; born 1961) is the W.M. Keck Professor of Structural Biology at

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) is a private, non-profit institution with research programs focusing on cancer, neuroscience, botany, genomics, and quantitative biology. It is located in Laurel Hollow, New York, in Nassau County, on ...

and 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. Her research focuses on the role of the

argonaute The Argonaute protein family, first discovered for its evolutionarily conserved stem cell function, plays a central role in RNA silencing processes as essential components of the RNA-induced silencing complex (RISC). RISC is responsible for the ...

complex in

RNA interference RNA interference (RNAi) is a biological process in which RNA molecules are involved in sequence-specific suppression of gene expression by double-stranded RNA, through translational or transcriptional repression. Historically, RNAi was known by ...

Early life and education

Leemor Joshua-Tor was born in

Rehovot, Israel Rehovot (, / ) is a city in the Central District (Israel), Central District of Israel, about south of Tel Aviv. In it had a population of . Etymology Israel Belkind, founder of the Bilu (movement), Bilu movement, proposed the name "Rehovot ...

. She received a B.S. from

Tel-Aviv University Tel Aviv University (TAU) is a Public university, public research university in Tel Aviv, Israel. With over 30,000 students, it is the largest university in the country. Located in northwest Tel Aviv, the university is the center of teaching and ...

in chemistry, then served for three years in the

Israeli Defense Forces Israeli may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the State of Israel * Israelis, citizens or permanent residents of the State of Israel * Modern Hebrew, a language * ''Israeli'' (newspaper), published from 2006 to 2008 * Guni Israeli (b ...

. She earned a PhD in chemistry in the lab of

Joel Sussman Joel L. Sussman (; born September 24, 1943) is an Israeli crystallographer best known for his studies on acetylcholinesterase, a key protein involved in transmission of nerve signals. He is Professor Emeritus of Structural Biology at the Weizman ...

from the

Weizmann Institute of Science The Weizmann Institute of Science ( ''Machon Weizmann LeMada'') is a Public university, public research university in Rehovot, Israel, established in 1934, fourteen years before the State of Israel was founded. Unlike other List of Israeli uni ...

in 1991, then did postdoctoral research at

Caltech The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech) is a private university, private research university in Pasadena, California, United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small g ...

Career

Joshua-Tor joined the faculty at

in 1995 and was promoted to full professor in 2005. She was Dean of the Watson School of Biological Sciences from 2007 to 2012. She is a faculty advisor of CSHL's Women in Science and Engineering group. She has been an HHMI investigator since 2008. In 2005, her lab published the structure of

, helping to demonstrate its role in

, and she is known for her research on argonaute's ''slicer''. She has collaborated extensively with Greg Hannon. Joshua-Tor's research has shed light on how the proteins responsible for

function.

Awards

* 1996: Beckman Young Investigator Award *

Investigator * 2017: Elected to the

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 ...

* 2017: 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: ASBMB

Mildred Cohn Award in Biological Chemistry The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) is a learned society that was founded on December 26, 1906, at a meeting organized by John Jacob Abel (Johns Hopkins University). The roots of the society were in the American P ...

* 2019: Harvey Lecture

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Joshua-Tor, Leemor Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Israeli biochemists Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Women biochemists People from Rehovot Tel Aviv University alumni Weizmann Institute of Science alumni 20th-century biologists 20th-century American women scientists 21st-century biologists 21st-century American women scientists Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences