[2] She is a pioneer in the area of biological regulation in which enzymes that destroy specific other proteins, called proteases, play a central role inside the cell.

She discovered and elucidated the central features of a new family of proteases that require energy for their function in the form of ATP-hydrolysis.

Her father was trained as an accountant and ran a company that made rotisseries and other small appliances.

[7] This experience helped fuel her passion for science, as she was introduced to genetics, DNA, cancer, and bacteria.

[8] From 1974 to 1976, she was a research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before returning as a senior investigator to NCI's Laboratory of Molecular Biology.

[5] Gottesman's later research at the National Institutes of Health used this lambda phage to understand how bacteriophages are able to insert themselves into a bacterial chromosome and then subsequently remove themselves.

[3] In Gottesman's studies, she showed that the ATP-dependent proteases are regulated by the delivery of their substrate molecules by anti-adaptor and adaptor protein.

[11] For example, one of these small RNAs in Gottesman's research was found to positively regulate the translation of RpoS, a stress sigma factor of E.