Thomas Christian Südhof was born on December 22, 1955, in Göttingen, Germany. He was the second of four children. Südhof's parents were physicians, with his father pursuing a career in academic medicine, while his mother cared for their growing family.
Südhof spent my childhood in Göttingen and Hannover and graduated from the Hannover Waldorf School - resurrected after the war - in 1975.
He obtained his Doctor of Medicine and doctoral degrees from the University of Göttingen in 1982. He performed his doctoral thesis work at the Max-Planck-Institut für biophysikalische Chemie in Göttingen with Professor Victor Whittaker on the biophysical structure of secretory granules, and his internship in the University of Göttingen Hospitals from 1981 to 1982.
In 1983, Südhof moved as post-doc to the United States to join the laboratory of Michael Brown and Joseph Goldstein at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. He succeeded in cloning the receptor of LDL (the low-density lipoprotein receptor), contributing to the reputation of Brown and Goldstein, who in 1985 were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work on cholesterol metabolism.
Südhof secured his first independent position as Assistant Investigator at Howard Hughes Medical Institute in 1986. He moved his laboratory to Stanford University in 2008. During this time, he set out to elucidate the molecular basis of signaling in the nervous system, focusing specifically on how chemicals known as neurotransmitters are released at junctions between neurons called synapses. Südhof succeeded in cloning and identifying a range of proteins involved in this process, and received several awards. He then moved to Stanford University School of Medicine, where he has continued to research the mechanisms of neuronal signaling at the pre-synaptic membrane. More recently, Südhof has turned his attention to understanding diseases such as Alzheimer's, Autism, and Schizophrenia.
Südhof is currently the Avram Goldstein Professor in the School of Medicine as well as a Professor of Molecular & Cellular Physiology, Psychiatry, and Neurology at Stanford University.
Südhof is the recipient of several awards, including the Alden Spencer Award (1993), the National Academy of Sciences Award in Molecular Biology (1997), the Bristol-Myers Award in Neuroscience (2004), the Passano Award (2008), the Kavli Award in Neuroscience (2010), the Lasker-deBakey Medical Basic Research Award (2013), and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (2013).
Thomas Christian Südhof discovered key molecular components and mechanisms that form the basis of chemical signaling in neurons. Südhof's findings helped scientists to better understand the cellular mechanisms underlying neurological conditions such as autism, schizophrenia, and Alzheimer's disease. He was awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.
In addition to the Nobel Prize, Südhof received the 2010 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience (with Rothman) and the 2013 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2002 and joined the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2010.
(It has been known for half a century that neurotransmitte...)
2008(This book provides a comprehensive and authoritative over...)
2003Thomas Südhof is an atheist. He grew up in an academic household with a strong religious bent. True to his name and nature, from early on Südhof doubted the tenets of his parents' beliefs - he probably was not easy to have around. What his upbringing instilled in him was a desire to question what is actually true. Südhof's greatest pleasure has always been to discover facts, to figure out how something works, to identify the relationships and connections that explain an observation.
Südhof isn't involved in politics.
Much of Südhof's research focused on presynaptic neurons, which release signaling chemicals called neurotransmitters into the synapse (or junction) between communicating cells (i.e., between neurons, between neurons and muscle cells, or between neurons and glands). He elucidated the process by which synaptic vesicles, which are filled with neurotransmitters, fuse with neuronal membranes and undergo exocytosis, in which they release their neurotransmitters into the extracellular environment. He found that specific interactions between proteins, such as between Munc18-1 and SNARE proteins, as well as a molecular complex based on the proteins RIM and Munc13, are required for synaptic vesicle fusion. He also described a process whereby calcium triggers vesicle fusion and exocytosis via binding to synaptic vesicle proteins known as synaptotagmins and identified presynaptic and postsynaptic proteins, called neurexins and neuroligins, respectively, that associate with one another and form a physical connection across the synaptic cleft (the gap found between the two neurons at a synapse). He later investigated mutations in neurexins and neuroligins and their relevance to neurological conditions such as autism.
Thomas Südhof is married to Lu Chen, who is also a professor at Stanford University. The couple had three children. Südhof has four more children from an earlier marriage with Annette Südhof.
Lu Chen is a Chinese-born American neuroscientist, who is a Professor of Neurosurgery, and of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.
James Edward Rothman is an American biochemist and cell biologist who discovered the molecular machinery involved in vesicle budding and membrane fusion in cells.
Randy Wayne Schekman is an American biochemist and cell biologist who contributed to the discovery of the genetic basis of vesicle transport in cells.
