DR TIM HUNT
Cancer Research UK, London
Nobel Prize winner in 2001 for Physiology and Medicine with Lee Hartwell and Paul Nurse

Cell Division, Signalling

Tim Hunt works for Cancer Research UK at its Clare Hall Laboratories near South Mimms. He is interested in the control of the cell cycle, focussing on the function and destruction of cyclins, the activating subunits of cyclin depedent protein kinases (CDKs). These "Key Regulators of the Cell Cycle" undergo periodic oscillations and are essential regulators of chromosome replication and cell division. The structure of these enzymes, which transfer phosphate from ATP to an unknown number of other cellular proteins, is now known at atomic detail, yet the identity of the key target proteins and the effect(s) of their phosphorylation remain to be clarified. Similarly, while it is known in some detail how the cyclins are degraded rapidly and specifically at the end of mitosis, mysteries about precisely how they are recognised and what does this recognition remain elusive, and is an important current topic of investigation.

Tim Hunt discovered cyclins by accident while teaching a summer laboratory practical course at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts. At the time, he was a Lecturer in Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge, U.K. and more interested in the control of protein synthesis, which is complicated enough, than in cell cycle control, which encompasses almost every aspect of a cell's behaviour. Fortunately, Woods Hole was (and remains) a wonderful environment in which to learn first hand about cell division: it has the one of the best biological libraries in the world as well as a constant flow of biologists, young and old, during the summer months.