On 9 June we will welcome Nobel Prize winner Professor Roderick MacKinnon to DPAG, where he will deliver the Burdon Sanderson Prize Lecture on ‘Higher-order transient structures (HOTS) and the principle of dynamic connectivity in membrane signalling'.
Roderick MacKinnon was born in Burlington, Massachusetts. He was drawn to science from an early age and comments, ‘Even as a young child figuring out how things around me work fascinated me. I suppose I was born with naturally curiosity to what is called science.’
He first studied biochemistry at Brandeis University and then earned a medical degree from Tufts University in 1982. After working as a doctor, MacKinnon returned to Brandeis University before moving to Harvard University in 1989 and then to Rockefeller University, New York, in 1996, where he conducted the research that led to his Nobel Prize.
One of life's most fundamental processes is the transportation of charged atoms (ions) through the outer walls of the cells that make up living organisms. Known as ion channels, these pathways are vitally important to signal transfers in nerves and muscles. Before MacKinnon's work, the detailed molecular architecture of potassium channels and the exact means by which they conduct ions remained speculative.
In 1998, using x-ray crystallography, MacKinnon succeeded in demonstrating what a potassium ion channel looks like. His prize-winning research was conducted primarily at the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS) of Cornell University, and at the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS) of Brookhaven National Laboratory.
MacKinnon is now the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Professor and head of the Laboratory of Molecular Neurobiology and Biophysics at Rockefeller University. His current work focuses on the molecular organization that underlies information transfer along signal pathways in the cell membrane. He says of his recent research, ‘In the past I studied biological molecules, especially ion channels and other membrane proteins, to understand how they work as individual units to perform their function. Now I am trying to understand how collections of biological molecules work together as mesoscale functional units.’
He says, ‘I do think that understanding the world around us at a very basic level is something very beautiful and that some of that understanding may someday be applied to our benefit.’
When we asked Professor MacKinnon what advice he might give to young research scientists he said, ‘Follow your internal curiosity. It will sustain you.’