I am thrilled to have contributed a minor detail to the lore of vaults under the tutelage of Lenny Rome at UCLA (https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.0500929102), and I am even more excited to read about the phenomenal science that Lenny’s lab continues produce in exploiting vaults for therapies, even if the purpose of vaults remains beyond his reach. Lenny is a one of a kind trifecta that one could ever want as a colleague and mentor: the hardest working, the most rigorous and the most pleasant scientist. He is also so humble that he happily accepts the title of “the vaults guy” with supreme humor.
So much of science is obsessed with application, but Lenny deserves credit for having dedicated his career to solving perhaps the last great mystery of the mammalian cell because the journey has been worth more than the prize. Vaults are the great scientific odyssey, and Lenny Rome deserves a lot of credit for having enriched our understanding through his odyssey.
Don’t ever miss a Lenny Rome talk because he has mastered the art of conveying enlightenment through humor.
