Olaf Schneewind
The University of Chicago
June 23, 1961 - May 26, 2019
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Scientific Discipline: Microbial Biology Membership Type:
Member
(elected 2018)
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Olaf Schneewind was a microbiologist recognized for his work on the pathogenesis of bacterial infections. He was best known for his studies on surface protein assembly in the envelope of Gram-positive bacteria, which involves sortase enzymes. Sortases cleave sorting signals of surface proteins at motif sequences for subsequent attachment to cell wall peptidoglycan or for polymerization into pilus structures. Knowledge of motif sequences and sortases enabled the identification of bacterial surface proteins from genome sequences and analysis of these molecules for their contributions to infectious disease pathogenesis and vaccine development. Schneewind was born in Germany and studied medicine at the University of Cologne. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Rockefeller University and joined the faculty of the University of California, Los Angeles in 1992. In 2001, Schneewind joined the faculty of the University of Chicago.
