Nigel Unwin

Peter Tripp Nigel Unwin ( born 1 November 1942) is a British neurobiologist and an emeritus researcher at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB ) of the Medical Research Council ( MRC) in Cambridge.

Life

Unwin holds a Bachelor of Engineering at the University of Otago and at Cambridge University, a Ph.D. before 1968 went to the LMB. Between 1980 and 1988 he was a professor of cell biology at Stanford University in Stanford, California, before moving back to the LMB, where in 1992 he became head of the Department of Neurobiology. From 2003 to 2008 he was Co - Director of the Department.

Work

Together with Richard Henderson succeeded Unwin first time ever, to elucidate the structure of a membrane protein, bacteriorhodopsin. Unwin has developed new methods of electron microscopy to operate by means of electron diffraction structure determination of biological macromolecules, especially of ion channels such as the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor, which plays a special role in signal transduction between nerve cells or between nerve cells and muscle fibers. The resolution of his analysis of this receptor in the electric ray (Torpedo ) reaches 4 angstroms.

Awards (selection)

Publications (selection)

  • A. Miyazawa, Y. Fujiyoshi and N. Unwin: Structure and gating mechanism of the acetylcholine receptor pore. In: Nature. Volume 423, 2003, pp. 949-955
  • N. Unwin: Refined structure of the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor at 4 Å resolution. In: J Mol Biol band 346, 2005, pp. 967-989
  • J. O'Brien, N. Unwin: Organization of spines on the dendrites of Purkinje cells. In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Volume 103, 2006, pp. 1575-1580
University of Cambridge Richard Henderson (biologist) Gregori Aminoff Prize Crystallography
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