Newswise — In the dance of life, there can be no wallflowers. The scientist whose research group discovered the long-sought mechanism by which eukaryotic cells step out is the 2004 winner of the E.B. Wilson Medal, the highest scientific honor of the American Society for Cell Biology.
Thomas D. Pollard, 62, of Yale University, will receive the Wilson Medal at the ASCB's 44th Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, on Sunday, December 5, for the pioneering studies of his laboratory on cellular motility including the discovery of the Arp2/3 complex. This protein complex controls the extension of actin filaments at the cell margin, allowing cells to crawl into new positions and to reshape themselves. The discovery of this fundamental system has immense implications in human health from fetal development to cancer biology.
Before joining Yale University in 2001, where is he now Chair of the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, Pollard was President of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California. From 1977 to 1996, Pollard was Professor and Director of the Department of Cell Biology and Anatomy at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore. A native of Pasadena and a 1964 graduate of Pomona College, Pollard earned his MD at Harvard Medical School in 1968.
Seen under the microscope, it has been obvious for 200 years that cells creep along by first extending a "process" or a pseudopod into new territory. Yet at the start of Pollard's career, cell biologists knew nothing about the molecular basis of this activity, which involves the assembly, extension and disassembly of the process. He began to investigate the mechanism as a medical student in the HMS laboratory of Sus Ito. Pollard's presentation of his work on actin filaments in motile cellular extracts at the 1969 ASCB Annual Meeting was the only paper on the subject. Thirty-five years later, actin filaments and cellular motility are among the hottest topics in research biology. Cellular motility, for example, makes it possible to wire up the million miles of connections between the nerve cells in the human brain. It's also behind the ability of our white blood cells to track down and ingest invading bacteria.
After a clinical internship at Massachusetts General Hospital, Pollard took a research position at the National Institutes of Health with Edward Korn. Using Acanthamoeba as a model system, they discovered the first "unconventional myosin" , the first motor protein that differed substantially from muscle myosins. That fostered a large field of research on the family of myosin motors.
Pollard's laboratory discovered some of the key proteins in the actin motility system in Acanthamoeba, including capping protein and Arp2/3 complex. Discovery of homologous proteins in other organisms established their importance and relevance to human biology and medicine. Pollard's laboratory has specialized in working out the biophysical mechanisms of actin-based motility including high-resolution protein structures and the rates of key reactions. His laboratory now focuses on cytokinesis, the mechanism that pinches cells in two at the end of cell division. The work on actin and cytokinesis is throwing light on a variety of conditions from birth defects to tumor metastasis.
Pollard has been married to Patricia Snowden Pollard, an educational and community service activist, since 1964. Their children, Katherine and Daniel, are both mathematicians building careers in computational biology. Pollard served as president of the ASCB (1987-88) and of the Biophysical Society (1992-93). He is a member of National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
ASCB's E.B.Wilson Medal, named for an early 20th century American pioneer in biology who advocated the chromosomal theory of inheritance, is awarded by scientific peers to those who have made significant and far-reaching contributions to cell biology over the course of a career.
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