Tonight on #MitoMonday we briefly highlight and remember the life and works of Dr. Beth Levine, A giant in the field of autophagy research, who sadly passed away recently. #LateNightWithTheRutterLab #WomenInSTEM #Autophagy 
Dr. Beth Levine was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1960. She obtained a degree in French studies from @BrownUniversity in 1981. She then earned her medical degree from @WeillCornell in 1986, and was a resident at @MountSinaiNYC hospital in internal medicine until 1989. 2/
In 1989 she joined the lab of Dr. Diane Griffen at @JohnsHopkins as a postdoc, working on infectious diseases and the neurobiology of viral pathogens. She then joined @Columbia in 1992, where she served as the Director of virology research from 1994-2004. 3/
Dr. Levine’s first big break came as a postdoc in 1993 in the Griffen lab, where she discovered that Chronic Sindbis virus infection can induce apoptosis in infected cells, and that this is dependent on the host cell’s expression of the oncogene BCL2. go.nature.com/3fnNu8s 4/
Dr. Levine expanded upon this discovery in her own lab, and in 1998 discovered the Bcl2 interacting protein, which she named Beclin (Beclin1), which, when overexpressed in neurons in vivo, can provide protection against Sindbis virus infection. bit.ly/3fF6uzN 5/
Beclin 1, was structurally similar to the yeast autophagy gene apg6/vps30. Motivated by this observation, Dr. Levine went on to identify beclin1 as the first mammalian autophagy gene in 1999. It is now the most studied mammalian autophagy protein. bit.ly/3hqX9x7 6/
In 2004, Dr. Levine moved to @UTSWNews to become Chief of infectious diseases division. In 2008 she became an Investigator at @HHMINEWS. And in 2013, she was elected into the @theNASciences. 7/
We were all devastated and saddened by the news yesterday of Dr. Levine's passing, after a long and brave battle with cancer. A huge loss for the entire scientific community. Our thoughts and prayers are with her family at this tough time. She will be greatly missed. 9/
“I enjoy clinical medicine, but research affords the opportunity to think creatively, to generate new hypotheses about how biology and medicine work, and to discover new biomedical truths"– Dr. Beth Levine #MitoMonday #LateNightWIthTheRutterLab
