Erika L F. Holzbaur (born 1960) is an American biologist who is the William Maul Measey Professor of Physiology at University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.
[1] She became interested in American history as a teenager, and in particular was inspired by the women's rights advocate Frederick Douglass.
[1] Her doctoral research at the University of Pennsylvania involved studies of the ATPase pathway of axonemal dynein.
[1][4] She recognized that the cytoplasmic dynein-associated proteins closely resembled a Drosophila gene called Glued, which was known to cause neurodegeneration in the fruit-fly.
[2] In the axons of neurons, these motor proteins are responsible for the transport of organelles over extraordinarily long distances.