Hsieh-Wilson was born in New York City, NY and received her bachelor's degree in chemistry at Yale University, where she graduated magna cum laude.
She then completed her Ph.D. in 1996 at the University of California, Berkeley, where she was a National Science Foundation Fellow in the laboratory of Peter G. Schultz and studied antibody-based catalysis.
[10] Hsieh-Wilson and her colleagues have found that the covalent-modifications of intercellular proteins by O-linked-N-acetylglucosamine (O-GlcNAc) within the mammalian nervous system have a large role in the regulation of gene expression, neuronal signaling, and synaptic plasticity.
[11] This post-translational modification, has been analysed in the rat brain using a novel chemoenzymatic strategy wherein O-GlcNAc modified proteins are selectively labeled with fluorescent or biotin tags.
Glycosaminoglycans are heterogeneously sulfated oligosaccharides that are very important in nervous system development, spinal cord injury, inflammation and cancer metastasis.