Roderick MacKinnon

Roderick MacKinnon (born 19 February 1956) is a professor of Molecular Neurobiology and Biophysics at Rockefeller University. He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry together with Peter Agre in 2003 for his work on the structure and operation of ion channels.

Biography

Early life and education
MacKinnon was born in Burlington, Massachusetts and initially attended the University of Massachusetts Boston. MacKinnon then transferred to Brandeis University after one year, and there he received a bachelor's degree in biochemistry in 1978, studying calcium transport through the cell membrane for his honors thesis in Christopher Miller's laboratory. It was also at Brandeis where MacKinnon met his future wife and working-colleague Alice Lee.

After receiving his degree from Brandeis, MacKinnon entered medical school at Tufts University. He got his M.D. in 1982 and received training in Internal Medicine at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. He did not feel satisfied enough with the medical profession, so in 1986 he returned to Christopher Miller's laboratory at Brandeis for postdoctoral studies.

Career
In 1989 he was appointed assistant professor at Harvard University where he studied the interaction of the potassium channel with a specific toxin taken from scorpion venom. He learned how to purify proteins and to use X-ray crystallography. In 1996, he moved to Rockefeller University as a professor and head of the Laboratory of Molecular Neurobiology and Biophysics. There, he started to work on the structure of the potassium channel. These channels are of particular importance to the nervous system and the heart. The channels enable potassium ions to cross the cell membrane.

Scientific contributions
Potassium channels demonstrate a seemingly strange activity: they permit the passage of potassium ions, whereas they do not allow the passage of the much smaller sodium ions. Before MacKinnon's work, the detailed molecular architecture of potassium channels and the exact means by which they conduct ions remained speculative. In 1998, despite barriers to the structural study of integral membrane proteins that had stopped most attempts for decades, MacKinnon and colleagues determined the three-dimensional molecular structure of a potassium channel from bacteria utilizing X-ray crystallography. With this structure and other biochemical experiments, MacKinnon and colleagues were able to explain the exact mechanism by which potassium channel selectivity occurs.

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.

Awards and distinctions
1997 - Newcomb Cleveland Prize
1998 - W. Alden Spencer Award
1999 - Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research
2000 - Elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences
2000 - Rosenstiel Award
2001 - Gairdner Foundation International Award
2003 - Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University
2003 - Nobel Prize in Chemistry

References

Other websites
Biography and Bibliographic Resources, from the Office of Scientific and Technical Information, United States Department of Energy
 Interview with Roderick MacKinnon by Harry Kroto Freeview video provided by the Vega Science Trust.
 Website of his lab at the Rockefeller University
 Ion Channel Chemistry: The Electrical System of Life Transcribed video of a May 2008 talk by MacKinnon, sponsored by the Oregon State University Libraries.
 Nobel Lecture by Roderick MacKinnon, 2003

1956 births
Living people
Scientists from Massachusetts
American Nobel Prize winners
American chemists
American neuroscientists