Kathleen Collins

Kathleen Collins serves as the Walter and Ruth Schubert Family Chair and Professor of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Structural Biology in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. She earned a B.S. and M.S. in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale University in 1987 and a Ph.D. in Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1992. After completing postdoctoral studies at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory with Carol Greider, Collins joined the Berkeley faculty in 1995. She held the position of Division Head for Biochemistry, Biophysics and Structural Biology from July 2020 to June 2025. Over nearly three decades, her research has pioneered the biochemistry, biophysics, and structural biology of telomerase, defining its subunit architectures and holoenzyme structures from Tetrahymena and human cells. Her work established links between telomerase deficiency and human diseases including dyskeratosis congenita, aplastic anemia, pulmonary fibrosis, and liver cirrhosis, promoting telomere length as a diagnostic and therapeutic biomarker. Key publications include Nguyen et al. on the atomic structure of human telomerase holoenzyme (Nature, 2018) and Wu and Collins on human telomerase specialization for repeat synthesis (EMBO Journal, 2014). Collins also uncovered stress-induced tRNA cleavage mechanisms and strand-specific small RNA loading onto Piwi proteins.

Supported by an NIH Director's Pioneer Award, Collins transitioned her laboratory to study eukaryotic non-LTR retrotransposons, their reverse transcriptases, and biotechnological applications. Her group developed Precise RNA-mediated Insertion of Transgenes (PRINT) for safe, site-specific transgene integration into the human genome, as reported in Thawani et al. on structures of vertebrate R2 retrotransposon complexes (Science Advances, 2025) and a Nature Biotechnology paper on harnessing retroelement proteins (2025). Collins' contributions extend to editing the volume Tetrahymena thermophila (2004) and editorial roles. Her impact is recognized by election to the National Academy of Sciences (2025) and American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2020), the 2022 American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Earl and Thressa Stadtman Distinguished Scientist Award, and the Bakar Fellowship.

Professional Email: kcollins@berkeley.edu