Robinson eventually started a postdoctoral research with Barbara Pearse,[5] joining her at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in December 1982.
Her achievements include the discovery of adaptins, which are specific proteins that manage cell-trafficking to ensure the correct cell cargo is transported to the right location.
[2] She also discovered different combinations of adapting, when together with clathrin, form a coat around vesicles that bud from intracellular membranes and act as transporters for protein packages to be distributed in the cell.
Robinson and her lab managed to find another AP complex, AP-3, which interacts with lysosomal membrane proteins such as LAMP1.
Robinson and her researchers use several approaches to look for novel adaptors and other components of the trafficking machinery, including proteomic analyses of sub cellular fractions, genome-wide siRNA library screening, insertional mutagenesis, and a new method they developed for rapidly inactivating proteins, called ‘knock sideways’.
[9] Her laboratory uses many techniques including immunolocalisation at the light and electron microscope levels, sub cellular fractionation, protein purification, proteomics, flow cytometry, live cell imaging, and X-ray crystallography.
Her work is also speculated to play a key role in evolution of eukaryotes form prokaryotes over two billion years ago.
For example, the HIV genome encodes a protein called Nef, which is required for the development of AIDS, and which works by hijacking adaptors and using them to modify the surface of the infected cell.
Robinson's work explains how coated vesicles sort cargo but also provides tools that can be used by others to address their own favorite problems.
She was awarded a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellowship in 1999 and in 2003 she was appointed Professor of Molecular Cell Biology.