R. John Ellis

Reginald John Ellis ( born February 12, 1935) is a British biologist and professor emeritus at the University of Warwick, Coventry.

Life

Ellis acquired in 1960 by David Denison Davies at King's College London, a Ph.D. with a thesis on transamination. As a postdoctoral fellow, he worked on sulfate reduction at Charles A. Pasternak at the University of Oxford. 1964 Ellis went to the Departments of Botany and Biochemistry, University of Aberdeen, before moving in 1970 as Head of the Working Group on chloroplast to the newly formed Department of Life Sciences ( Biological Sciences ) of the University of Warwick in Coventry. Here he received a professorship in 1976. He retired in 1996.

Work

Ellis was considered a leading researcher in the field of biogenesis of chloroplasts, their biochemistry in higher plants he researched. In 1980 he discovered the first molecular chaperone that helped assemble subunits of Rubisco. In Ellis ' work was Franz -Ulrich Hartl and Arthur Horwich build. Knowledge of the chaperones that are needed in diverse cellular processes, Ellis was able to significantly expand.

Ellis ' work is fundamental to the understanding of diseases caused by disorders of protein folding, such as Alzheimer 's disease and cystic fibrosis.

His work Molecular chaperones from 1991 is one of the most cited papers in molecular biology.

Awards

Writings (selection )

• The chaperonin. Academic Press Inc., 1996, ISBN 978-0-12-237455-5
• How Science Works: Evolution. Springer Netherlands, 2010 ISBN 978-90-481-3182-2