Anne Houdusse, a research director at the CNRS and head of the "Structural Motility" group at the Curie Institute, has been awarded in 2013 the CNRS Silver Medal. This recognizes her major contribution to the decryption of mechanisms that allow complex molecules such as molecular motors, and more specifically myosin, to transform chemical energy into motion or power in the cells.
After obtaining a PhD at the Pasteur Institute in the field of protein crystallography, Anne Houdusse chose to focus her research specifically on molecular motors during her time as a post-doc at Brandeis University in Boston.
In 2013 Anne has gained several distinctions and this year has also seen her become an EMBO member. The European Molecular Biology Organization has a membership of about 1,500 researchers throughout the world covering all aspects of molecular biology and who are elected on the basis of excellence in scientific research.
As part of their research on myosin V and myosin VI, Anne Houdusse and her group came to work on the PROXIMA1 and SWING beamlines, the results of which have been published in Cell and Molecular Cell. Further reading on the subject: http://www.synchrotron-soleil.fr/portal/page/portal/Soleil/ToutesActualites/2013/Myosine