Susan S. Taylor

Susan Taylor began her career in science when she chose chemistry as her major at the Univeristy of Wisconsin, which was a bold move for a woman in 1960. During college she was determined to go to medical school, but that all changed when she met her future husband, Palmer Taylor, who was finishing his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin and on his way to the National Institutes of Health for post-grad work. In a history changing moment, Taylor applied to graduate school at nearby Johns Hopkins University. After her first year at Hopkins, Taylor and Palmer were married.

When Palmer was invited to join a new molecular pharmacology program in Cambridge, England, Taylor landed a fellowship at the prestigious Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology where her love of proteins began to blossom as she worked alongside Brian Hartley.

In 1970, Taylor's fellowship at MRC ended and she accepted a fellowship with Nathan Kaplan at UC San Diego where Palmer would be as well. Not long after she began her residency at UC San Diego, she secured a faculty position in the chemistry department.

Since then Taylor has made great leaps forward in elucidating the structure, dynamics, and localization of protein kinase A (PKA). PKA is one of the cell's most important signaling molecules. It helps regulate memory, development, cell growth and cell death. Defects in PKA are associated with immune disorders and many diseases such as cancer and cardiac disorders. In 1991 Taylor and her lab solved the crystal structure of PKA's catalytic subunit which is conserved throught the kinase family. However, there was still much to be discovered and in 2005 Taylor and her colleagues were able to explain how PKA's regulatory subunit inhibits the catalytic subunit in the absence of cAMP. This discovery lead to the full understanding of how PKA works.