Press Release

Eminent British Scientist, Dr. Richard Henderson to Visit Houston,

Will Give Public Lecture Celebrating US/UK Collaboration

HOUSTON—(December 3, 2003)—Dr. Richard Henderson, a pioneer in electron microscopy and Director of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, will give a public lecture entitled “50 Years of Molecular Biology: Translating Bright Ideas into Improved Health and Wealth” in Cullen Auditorium of Baylor College of Medicine on Monday, December 8, 2003 at 4:00 p.m.  This Distinguished Speaker Series lecture is sponsored by the Gulf Coast Consortia and the British Consulate General-Houston as part of a celebration of the anniversary of the discovery of DNA fifty years ago this year.

As Director of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, Dr. Henderson is a pioneer in the field of electron microscopy. He was the first to solve a number of the technical and conceptual problems that limited the attainable resolution of electron crystallography and by 1990, he and his colleagues had succeeded in obtaining the first atomic structure of a membrane protein, bacteriorhodopsin, by using electron microscopy and diffraction.  Currently, Dr. Henderson is interested in single particle electron cryomicroscopy which offers the promise of determining structures of large protein assemblies without the need to first make crystals.  These methods are now being used to solve many outstanding problems in structural biology.

Dr. Henderson has a long record of collaboration with scientists in the Texas Medical Center, most notably with Dr. John Spudich at UTHSC, Director of the Center for Membrane Biology and Chair of the Gulf Coast Consortium for Membrane Biology, and Dr. Wah Chiu at Baylor College of Medicine, Director of the National Center for Macromolecular Imaging and Chair of the Gulf Coast Consortia Oversight Committee.  Collaborative efforts of this type often lead to acceleration of both knowledge and application in the treatment of biological diseases.

The lecture is open to the public.

For further information please contact Lisa Blinn at (713) 348 4752, E-mail: lisblinn@rice.edu

Or Helen M. Mann at (713) 659 3205, E-mail: helen.mann@fco.gov.uk

Notes for Editors:

Dr Richard Henderson is Director of Britain's Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England. Originally a physicist from Edinburgh University, Dr Henderson switched to molecular biology at age 21, going as a research student to the famous MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) in Cambridge, UK where he joined the team led by David Blow that worked out the atomic structure of the enzyme chymotrypsin, one of the first few protein structures to be determined using X-ray crystallography. 

 Now 58 years old, he has turned his attention to single particle electron microscopy where more advanced electron cryomicroscopy now offers the promise being able to determine atomic structures of large protein assemblies without the need first to make crystals.  These methods are now being used to solve many of the outstanding problems in structural biology.

He was Joint-Head of the Division of Structural Studies at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology from 1986 until 2001, and has been Director since 1996, succeeding Sir Aaron Klug.   The Laboratory now houses about 350 scientists in four Divisions working on a wide range of problems in neurobiology, cell biology, structural biology, immunology, cancer biology and biotechnology.  LMB also continues to develop techniques and methods alongside tackling challenging new scientific problems.  

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences.

The Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology is one of the largest research institutes funded by the Medical Research Council. It carries out research into the fundamental processes of life by the study of the molecular basis of biological phenomena. For additional information, please visit the LMB web site, http://www.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk

The Gulf Coast Consortia(GCC) is an innovative research and education collaboration formed to provide a formal and lasting mechanism for advancing biological sciences in the 21st century. Comprised of six prominent institutions, Baylor College of Medicine, Rice University, University of Houston, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, and University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, it is one of the largest inter-institutional co-operatives in the world with a focus on building strong research collaborations that bring together complementary and disparate faculty expertise as well as building multidisciplinary training opportunities for students in the computational, biological, mathematical, physical and chemical sciences.  For additional information, please visit the GCC web site:  www.gulfcoastconsortia.org

Discovery of DNA: On April 25th 1953 James Watson and Francis Crick described the structure of DNA in the journal Nature.

Dr Henderson's lecture is part of anniversary celebrations and events being held in the United States, Britain, and across the world, throughout 2003 to commemorate the discovery - the culmination of research by the UK’s Medical Research Council scientists, Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin in London, and James Watson and Francis Crick in Cambridge. This discovery was one of the most significant landmarks of 20th century science, one that would revolutionise biology and ultimately form the basis of a new multi-billion dollar industry – biotechnology.

See also: US Events Celebrating DNA50  http://www.britainusa.com/science

DNA50 UK Web site: www.dna50.org.uk

NIH: www.genome.gov

The Sanger Institute: www.sanger.ac.uk

Nature: http://www.nature.com/genomics/human/watson-crick

http://www.nature.com/nature/dna50

The National Center for Macromolecular Imaging (NCMI)at Baylor College of Medicine is supported by the National Center for Research Resources of National Institutes of Health. Under the direction of its principal investigator, Dr. Wah Chiu (wah@bcm.tmc.edu), its mission is technology development, collaboration, service and training. The Center is uniquely equipped with two high-resolution intermediate-voltage electron cryomicroscopes (JEOL2010F and JEOL3000SFF) operated at liquid nitrogen and at liquid helium temperatures, respectively. The NCMI technology and research development efforts are focused on extending the resolution, speed and flexibility of electron cryomicroscopy for three-dimensional structure determination of macromolecular assemblies. Generally, NCMI investigators focus on specimens ranging from 300 kDa to 30 MDa, and can produce structures from very small quantities of purified specimens.  Researchers are developing technology for routine structure determinations of these specimens at sub-nanometer resolution, approaching a resolution sufficient for tracing a polypeptide backbone. The software developed in the Center for data analysis is freely available to the scientific community.

Presently, the Center is engaged in over 50 collaborative projects with investigators world-wide. The biological projects include cytoskeletal filaments and bundles, ion channels, membrane transporters, viruses, protein-nucleic acid complexes, chaperones, and large oligomeric proteins. In addition, NCMI sponsors workshops and symposia on a regular basis to disseminate its imaging technology to a broader community.  For additional information, please visit the NCMI web site:  http://ncmi.bcm.tmc.edu.

The Center for Membrane Biology (CMB)is a newly established research unit of the University of Texas Health Science Center focused on structure/function of biological membranes.  Cell membrane surfaces and their exposed proteins are the most accessible targets to treat human tissue or to destroy infectious microbes, and more than 60% of medications target membrane proteins on human cells.  Membrane functions are vital to health and their diverse and fundamental roles in cellular processes make them a new frontier of biological and biomedical research.  Key challenges being addressed by the CMB are to elucidate the roles of membranes in normal and diseased tissue, and to facilitate drug discovery.  Researchers in the CMB study cell mechanisms of signaling and transport and membrane assembly with multidisciplinary methods, including crystallography, NMR, molecular spectroscopy, biochemistry, molecular biology, and genomic and proteomic approaches.  Supported by the UT Health Science Center, the Welch Foundation, and extramural grants, the CMB under the leadership of its director, Dr. John L. Spudich, currently consists of seven faculty members and their laboratories with expansion to ten principal investigators underway for the next two years.  For additional information, please visit the CMB web site:  http://www.uth.tmc.edu/cmb/.