Olaf Schneewind was elected into the National Academy of Sciences. The National Academy of Sciences is charged with providing independent, objective advice to the nation on matters related to science and technology, and membership is one of the highest professional honors a scientist can achieve.
Schneewind is best known for his work discovering sortases — enzymes that assemble proteins in the envelope of Gram-positive bacteria. Sortases cleave sorting signals at motif sequences for subsequent attachment (covalent linkage) to cell wall peptidoglycan or for polymerization into pilus structures, which enable them to adhere to other bacterial or to animal cells. Without sortases and their surface protein substrates, bacteria (such as Staphylococcus aureus or its drug-resistant forms, known as MRSA) cannot cause disease or interact with their environment. Investigation of sortase motif sequences has enabled Schneewind and his team to identify the surface proteins of any bacterial pathogen based on genome sequences and to study these molecules for their contributions to disease establishment and for vaccine development. These insights have allowed his team to find and study how S. aureus evades detection by the immune system and to create vaccines for safety and efficacy testing in humans.
