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Over the past four decades, structural biologist Raúl Padrón has elucidated muscle contraction at the molecular and atomic level using a model system that he and his colleague Roger Craig developed: tarantula skeletal muscle. Padrón’s research on how skeletal muscle thick filaments relax and become activated is helping to inform the molecular pathogenesis of human muscle diseases. For such advances, Padrón was elected as an international member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in 2018; later, he emigrated to the United States due to his native Venezuela’s ongoing political crisis. Now a professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Padrón answers longstanding questions in his Inaugural Article (1) concerning striated muscle contraction that shed light on its underlying mechanisms in invertebrates and vertebrates.
Raúl Padrón. Image credit: Marie Craig (photographer).
Home Laboratory at Age 11
Padrón was born in Caracas to a concert pianist mother and pharmacologist and microbiologist father. Through his mother he gained a strong work ethic. He was also greatly influenced by his father, who maintained a home laboratory. “I still remember my surprise when he showed me paramecia swimming under a microscope,” Padrón says. “Soon, I started raising yeast on chicken soup to see them under magnification.”
When he was 11 years old, Padrón was permitted to have a separate laboratory, where he did chemistry and biology experiments and built electronic equipment. He attended San Ignacio High School in Caracas, where mathematician Angel Urmeneta and biologist Raphael Bredy reinforced his academic interests. In 1966, Bredy suggested that Padrón visit the Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Research (IVIC). During the visit, he met biochemist Karl Gaede, whose laboratory he joined at age 16. Padrón says, “Under Gaede’s advice, I decided to study electrical engineering at the Central University of Venezuela, as he thought this would provide a good background for a …
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