TIBS 15-JUNE 1990

GRAPEVINE Election of Fellows to the Royal soc ty At a meeting of the Royal Society held in London on 15 March 1990, 40 new Fellows were elected. These included:

Dr Michael Ashbemor. Reader in Developmental Genetics in the University of Cambridge. Distinguished for his work on cytology, genetics and evolution using the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, as a model system. He has made elegant studies of the chromosomes of the fruit fly, revealing many novel features of gene structure and function.

Professor David AM~ony Brown. Professor and Head of the Department of Pharmacology at University College and Middlesex School of Medicine, London. Distinguished for his elucidation of the mechanisms of action of neurotransmitters on peripheral neurons and in the brain. He is an outstanding exponent of the use of electrophysiological techniques for the study of the action of both drugs and transmitters.

Dr Andrew Chades Crewford. Reader in Physiology in the University of Cambridge. Distinguished for discovering (with Dr R. Fettiplace) that the hair cells of the turtle's ear are sharply tuned to different frequencies, that their intracellular potentials resonate electrically at these frequencies, and that the hair bundles contain an active force- generating mechanism.

I~0fessor Peter Leslie Dutt0n. Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. Distinguished for his work in bioenergetics, in particular on the reaction centre of photosynthetic bacteria. He has made major contributions to elucidating the sequence of events involved in electron transfer from chlorophyll to the secondary quinone where the biochemical reactions can be said to begin.

Dr Robert Fettlpiace. Howe Senior Research Fellow of the Royal Society at the University of Cambridge. In a series of remarkable experiments (with Dr A. Crawford) he analysed the electrical and mechanical properties of the hair cells of the turtle's ear. Not only are their responses sharply tuned, but they also resonate electrically to different frequencies and contain an active force- generating mechanism.

Dr ~ Alan Hndgldn. Member of the Scientific Staff at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge. Distinguished for his pioneering study of the genetic control of sex determination in the nematode Caenorhabdifis elegans. His exceptional analysis has resulted in one of the most thoroughly understood systems of developmental gene regulation in any animal.

Dr Louise Napier Johnson. Lecturer in Molecular Biophysics in the University of Oxford. Distinguished for her contributions to protein crystallography, in particular for her studies of the mechanism of action of the large, complex enzyme, glycogen phosphorylase b and its allosteric regulation.

Professor Steven Victor Ley. Professor of Chemistry at the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, London. Distinguished for his contributions to synthetic organic chemistry embracing new methods and the total synthesis of complex molecules of biological importance.

Professor Lewis Norman Mander. Professor of Organic Chemistry in the Australian National University, Canberra. Distinguished for his contributions to the total synthesis of the Gibberellin class of plant growth regulators.

Professor John Albert Raven. Professor of Biology in the University of Dundee. Distinguished for his many theoretical and experimental contributions to the understanding of transport of hydrogen ions and weak electrolytes into plants. His work on photosynthesis and respiration has quantified the role of dark respiration.

Dr David John Read. Reader in Plant Sciences in the University of Sheffield. Distinguished for his contributions to the understanding of interactions between green plants and soil fungi. He has clarified the functions of the mycorrhizal infections of a variety of plants and forest trees and has demonstrated how a range of nutrients are transported from plant to plant via the fungal mycelium.

Dr George Robert Stark. Associate Director of Research at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, London. Distinguished for his wide range of experimental and methodological contributions to protein chemistry and molecular biology. In

particular he elucidated the structure and allosteric mechanism of aspartate transcarbamylase, the antiviraI action of interferon and the involvement of gene amplification in induced drug resistance.

Dr Azlm Suranl. Senior Principal Scientific Officer at the AFRC Institute of Animal Physiology and Genetics Research, Babraham, Cambridge. Distinguished for his contributions to mammalian embryology and in particular for his discovery of genome imprinting during gamete formation. This provided a fundamental new insight into developmental genetics and demonstrated that male and female genomes are not functionally equivalent.

Professor Herman Waklmann. Kay Kendall Professor of Therapeutic Immunology in the University of Cambridge. Distinguished for his contributions to our understanding of cell-cell interactions in immune responses and graft versus host reactions. His monoclonal antibodies can specifically deplete functionally different subsets of immune cells. This has great therapeutic potential.

Prefessor Alan Frederick Williams. Director of the Medical Research Council Cellular Immunology Unit at the University of Oxford. Distinguished for his research on the nature of differentiation antigens expressed by lymphoid cells. His structural studies led him to propose the concept of an immunogiobulin superfamily and many functionally distinct cell membrane molecules have been found to conform to this concept.

Dr Gregory Paul Winter. Member of the Scientific Staff at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge. Distinguished for his contributions to the founding of protein engineering and more recently for the development of antibody engineering with striking results, including the successful grafting of antigen recognition regions on to a human antibody framework.

Election to Fellowship is widely recognized as a sign of highest regard in science. A maximum of 40 new Fellows (from Britain and the Commonwealth) are elected annually. Foreign members are elected later in the year.

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