James E. Rothman, in full James Edward Rothman (born November 3, 1950, Haverhill, Massachusetts, U.S.), American biochemist and cell biologist who discovered the molecular machinery involved in vesicle budding and membrane fusion in cells. Cellular vesicles, which are bubblelike structures, play a critical role in the storage and transport of molecules within cells, and errors in their function can lead to various diseases, including immunological, neurological, and metabolic disorders. For his contributions to the understanding of vesicle transport, Rothman shared the 2013 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with American biochemist and cell biologist Randy W. Schekman and German American neuroscientist Thomas C. Südhof.
Rothman earned a bachelor’s degree in physics in 1971 from Yale University and a doctorate in biological chemistry in 1976 from Harvard University, where he also studied medicine. In 1978, after conducting postdoctoral research in biology under American scientist Harvey F. Lodish at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Rothman took a professorship in biochemistry at Stanford University. He remained there until 1988, after which he served at Princeton University (1988–91) and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York (1991–2004). He joined the faculty of Columbia University in 2003/2004 and that of Yale in 2008. At Yale, Rothman was a professor of cell biology and chemistry and director of the Nanobiology Institute.
Rothman began investigating the machinery of vesicle budding and fusion in the late 1970s. He later conducted his experiments by using a cell-free system, in which the molecules thought to be important in vesicle transport were added to a test tube in an attempt to reconstitute the process and thereby eliminate certain complexities associated with the cellular environment. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Rothman and colleagues identified a set of molecules, a protein called NSF and a family of proteins known as SNAP, that serve key functions in membrane trafficking. He subsequently discovered that a complex of SNARE proteins was fundamental to vesicle membrane fusion. Rothman’s work provided important insight into the role of the Golgi apparatus in protein processing. He later investigated the biophysics and regulation of vesicle fusion and the organization of the Golgi apparatus.
In addition to the Nobel Prize, Rothman received numerous awards throughout his career, including the 1996 Gairdner Foundation International Award (with Schekman), the 2002 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award (with Schekman), and the 2010 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience (with Südhof). He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1993 and the following year became a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.