Gregory S. Payne was born in San Francisco, California, but was raised, after a brief stint in Silver Spring, Maryland, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the oldest of three siblings. Both of his parents were scientists: his mother had a PhD in physiology, though took time off to raise her children before returning to a professorship in the Departments of Obstetrics and Gynecology and of Biological Chemistry at the University of Michigan; his father received his MD, then went to Walter Reed Army Medical Center to study viruses and to the University of Michigan for postdoctoral work with Thomas Francis, Jr. , before accepting a position in the Department of Epidemiology at the university. Excepting the loss of one of his sisters to leukemia, Payne had what he considered a relatively normal childhood, playing with friends, and playing hockey, tennis, and the violin. Payne's parents insisted that he have a well-rounded education; he rarely went to his parents' labs. He entered the University of Michigan as an undergraduate and took part in an experimental program there called the Residential College. He took all the classes he needed for a degree in biochemistry but he concentrated almost exclusively on theater, particularly by his third year. Under the auspices of writing a senior thesis, Payne went to New York to study theater and then returned to Ann Arbor to look for positions in local theater companies. When nothing came from his search, he decided to get a job at a lab to make some money. He started as a dishwasher, but then was allowed to assist in making preparations for research into the movement of amino acids from the outside to the inside of the cell, specifically growing tumors in mice. He changed his major from theater to biology and decided to go to graduate school. He matriculated at the University of California, San Francisco in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics and did a rotation hybridizing nucleic acids in John D. Baxter's lab, but then moved on to work with Harold E. Varmus and J. Michael Bishop studying RNA tumor viruses, specifically looking at how Rous-associated virus causes tumors. While there he collaborated with chicken geneticist Lyman B. Crittenden and experienced the lab's adoption of Edward M. Southern's blotting technique and other recombinant DNA technologies. From San Francisco Payne went on to a postdoctoral position with Randy Schekman at the University of California, Berkeley, trying to recreate in the test tube the process of transporting a protein from the Golgi apparatus to the vacuole, also developing an interest in clathrin's role in the secretory process. He took a reverse genetics approach, used antibodies to identify clathrin, and discovered that knocking out the clathrin gene did not kill cells, disputing successfully Sandra K. Lemmon and Elizabeth W. Jones's work. He then left Berkeley to start his own lab at the University of California, Los Angeles, researching proteins involved in cell transport. The interview concludes with his thoughts on the Pew Scholars Program in the Biomedical Sciences grant and the importance of flexible funds; his collaboration with Frances M. Brodsky (Pew Scholar Class of 1988); overcoming skepticism about the significance of yeast analogies; how creative scientists identify the most promising approach and organism to solve a problem; and the relevance of research. At the end of the interview, Payne talks about becoming a principal investigator and a teacher; training his investigators to withstand criticism; the importance of basic science research; the value of competition in science; his mother's career as a scientist.