Profs. Heuser, Yamanaka Elected to National Academy of Sciences
May 6, 2011
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in Washington, DC announced on the 3rd the election of two Kyoto University Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (iCeMS) PIs among its newest members. Prof. John Heuser, also of Washington University in St. Louis, is one of 72 new full members, and Kyoto University Center for iPS Cell Research and Application (CiRA) Director Prof. Shinya Yamanaka, also of the Gladstone Institutes, is one of 18 new foreign associates.
NAS membership, conferred upon Thomas Edison as well as nearly 200 Nobel Prize winners including Albert Einstein, is considered one of the highest scientific honors available in the United States.
The NAS, a non-profit organization established in 1863, is "an honorific society of distinguished scholars engaged in scientific and engineering research, dedicated to the furtherance of science and technology and to their use for the general welfare." (From "About the NAS".) Its current membership stands at 2,113, with 418 foreign associates. The official journal of the Academy, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), is one of the most widely read scientific journals in the world. The New York Times has referred to the NAS as the United States' 
"most eminent organization of scientists."
Prof. John Heuser
John E. Heuser, MD, a professor of biophysics in the Cell Biology and Physiology Department at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis as well as being an iCeMS PI, has been recognized by the NAS for his groundbreaking discovery of synaptic vesicle recycling in nerve terminals. This led to a general realization in the field of cell biology that membrane recycling occurs in all cells, and is a natural balance of the dynamics of cell 'eating' and cell 'secreting' — the latter being particularly vital for nerve cells in the important process of 'synaptic transmission' that underlies all nerve cell communication.
To further observe this nerve-secretion and to study it in health and disease, Prof. Heuser invented a 'quick-freeze' machine that has been replicated worldwide and used to capture a variety of other ultra-fast biological processes such as muscle contraction, insulin secretion, and fertilization.
For three decades, Prof. Heuser has continued to use this device at Washington University, and now also at Kyoto University's iCeMS — in conjunction with other advanced electron-microscopic techniques such 'deep-etching' — to image all manner of membranes and molecules embedded in ice.
Prof. Shinya Yamanaka
CiRA Director Prof. Shinya Yamanaka serves concurrently as an iCeMS PI in addition to being a senior investigator at the Gladstone Institutes. The first to have successfully created induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells using skin cells from adult mice, in 2007 the Yamanaka Lab succeeded in creating human iPS cells as well, paving the way to new drug development and advances in regenerative medicine.