biology

Tom Rapoport

Tom Rapoport is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Tom Rapoport rather than just read about it. In short: Tom Abraham Rapoport (born June 17, 1947) is a German-American cell biologist who studies protein transport in cells. Currently, he is a professor at Harvard Medical School and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.

Key takeaways

Tom Rapoport belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Tom Rapoport to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Tom Rapoport from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Tom Abraham Rapoport (born June 17, 1947) is a German-American cell biologist who studies protein transport in cells. Currently, he is a professor at Harvard Medical School and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, he grew up in East Germany. In 1995, he accepted an offer to become a professor at Harvard Medical School. In 1997, he became an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is a member of the American and German National Academies of Science.

Biography Rapoport was born in Cincinnati in 1947. His parents, Samuel Mitja Rapoport and Ingeborg Rapoport, had fled the Nazis, and when he was three years old, they fled the United States in 1950 due to being investigated for un-American activities. After a brief stay in Vienna, they finally settled in Berlin in the German Democratic Republic in 1952, where his father became a Professor for Biochemistry and director of the Institute of Physiological Chemistry of the Humboldt-University, and his mother became a Professor for neonatology at the Charite Hospital. His brother is mathematician Michael Rapoport. Tom A. Rapoport received his PhD on mathematical modeling of the kinetics of inorganic pyrophosphatase in 1972 from Humboldt University. He worked in the lab of Peter Heitmann, and his father, Samuel Mitja Rapoport, was head of the Institute of Physiological Chemistry. At Humboldt, he collaborated with Reinhart Heinrich on the mathematical modeling of glycolysis in red blood cells, leading to the establishment of metabolic control theory on which they submitted a joint 'habilitation' thesis. At the same time, he worked with Sinaida Rosenthal, a former student of his father, on cloning the insulin gene from carp. In 1979, he moved to the Zentralinstitut für Molekularbiologie der Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR, later called the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine, where he became a professor in 1985. He moved to the United States, the country his parents fled from in 1950, in 1995. He has been a professor at the Harvard Medical School since 1995, and an HHMI investigator since 1997. He studies several aspects of cellular secretion, including the mechanisms by which newly synthesized proteins are translocated from the cytosol to the lumen of the endoplasmic reticulum by the Sec61 complex (also known as the translocon), how misfolded secretory proteins are degraded by endoplasmic reticulum associated protein degradation (also known as ERAD), and how reticulons and related proteins regulate the morphology of the endoplasmic reticulum.

Selected research articles Voeltz, GK; Prinz WA; Shibata Y; Rist JM; Rapoport TA (10 February 2006). "A class of membrane proteins shaping the tubular endoplasmic reticulum". Cell. 124 (3): 573–586. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2005.11.047. PMID 16469703. S2CID 12760025. Ye, Y; Shibata Y; Yun C; Ron D; Rapoport TA (24 June 2004). "A membrane protein complex mediates retro-translocation from the ER lumen into the cytosol". Nature. 429 (6994): 841–847. Bibcode:2004Natur.429..841Y. doi:10.1038/nature02656. PMID 15215856. S2CID 4317750. Van den Berg B, Clemons WM Jr, Collinson I, Modis Y, Hartmann E, Harrison SC, Rapoport TA (1 January 2003). "X-ray structure of a protein-conducting channel". Nature. 427 (6969): 36–44. doi:10.1038/nature02218. PMID 14661030. S2CID 4360143. Görlich, D; Rapoport TA (19 November 1993). "Protein translocation into proteoliposomes reconstituted from purified components of the endoplasmic reticulum membrane". Cell. 75 (4): 615–630. doi:10.1016/0092-8674(93)90483-7. PMID 8242738. Heinrich, R; Rapoport TA (15 February 1974). "A linear steady-state treatment of enzymatic chains. General properties, control and effector strength". Eur. J. Biochem. 42 (1): 89–95. doi:10.1111/j.1432-1033.1974.tb03318.x. PMID 4830198.

Awards 2004 Awarded Otto Warburg Medal of the German Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology 2005 Awarded Max Delbrück Medal of the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine. 2007 Sir Hans Krebs Medal 2011 Awarded the Schleiden Medal from the Leopoldina

References

External links Profile at Harvard Medical School Profile at the HHMI Rapoport laboratory website Rapoport, Tom A. (15 November 2010). "A Preliminary Report on My Life in Science". Molecular Biology of the Cell. 21 (22). American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB): 3770–3772. doi:10.1091/mbc.e10-05-0398. ISSN 1059-1524. PMC 2982106. PMID 21079005. NIH Seminar Series, Mechanisms of Protein Translocation Across Membranes, May 20, 2009 on YouTube

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Tom Rapoport

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Tom Rapoport claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Tom Rapoport before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Tom Rapoport ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Tom Rapoport

In research: Tom Rapoport appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Tom Rapoport in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Tom Rapoport is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1947 births, 20th-century German biologists, 21st-century American biologists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Tom Rapoport outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Tom Rapoport in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Tom Rapoport means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Tom Rapoport out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Tom Rapoport in simple terms?

Why does Tom Rapoport matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Tom Rapoport?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Tom Rapoport.