American Philosophical Society
Member History

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Residency
International (1)
Resident (2)
Class
2. Biological Sciences[X]
Subdivision
201. Molecular Biology and Biochemistry[X]
1Name:  Sir Michael J. Berridge
 Institution:  The Babraham Institute; University of Cambridge
 Year Elected:  2007
 Class:  2. Biological Sciences
 Subdivision:  201. Molecular Biology and Biochemistry
 Residency:  International
 Living? :   Deceased
 Birth Date:  1938
 Death Date:  February 13, 2020
   
 
Michael John Berridge was born in 1938 in Gatooma, a small town in the middle of Rhodesia, which is now Zimbabwe. He began his education at Jameson High School where he was fortunate in being taught biology by Pamela Bates who fostered his academic interests and encouraged him to pursue a scientific career. He enrolled in the University of Rhodesia and Nyasaland in Salisbury to read Zoology and Chemistry where he received his B.Sc. (1st Class Honours) in 1960. He then travelled to England to begin research on insect physiology with Sir Vincent Wigglesworth at the University of Cambridge and was awarded his Ph.D. in 1964. He than travelled to the United States to begin a period of post-doctoral study first at the University of Virginia and later at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. During his stay in Cleveland he began his interest in how cells communicate with each other and was fortunate to obtain valuable advice from Dr Ted Rall who a few years earlier had worked together with Earl Sutherland who received a Nobel Prize for his discovery of the second messenger cyclic AMP. In 1969 Berridge returned to Cambridge to take up an appointment at the AFRC Unit of Insect Neurophysiology and Pharmacology. He currently is an Emeritus Babraham Fellow at The Babraham Institute Laboratory of Molecular Signalling. Berridge is best known for his discovery of the second messenger inositol trisphosphate (IP3), which plays a universal role in regulating many cellular processes including cell growth and information processing in the nervous system. His studies on cell signalling began with his interest in trying to understand the control of fluid secretion by an insect salivary gland. His introduction and development of this simple model system paved the way for a number of significant observations which culminated in the major breakthrough of uncovering a new second messenger system responsible for regulating intracellular calcium signalling. A role for second messengers in controlling fluid secretion was first recognised when cyclic AMP was found to mimic the stimulatory action of 5-hydroxytryptamine. Subsequent studies revealed that calcium was also important and Berridge was one of the first to draw attention to the integrated action of the cyclic AMP and calcium messenger systems. He showed that signal calcium could be derived from both external and internal reservoirs. A major problem emerged as to how cells gained access to their internal stores of calcium. Berridge provided the first direct evidence to support Michell's hypothesis that the hydrolysis of inositol lipids played a role in calcium signalling. Interest in inositol phosphates began to intensify when Berridge developed a new approach of measuring their formation as a direct way to study receptor-mediated inositol lipid hydrolysis. Of particular significance, was his introduction of the lithium amplification technique to provide an exquisitely sensitive method for measuring inositol lipid turnover. His work on lithium provided new insights into how this drug controls manic-depressive illness. Using the lithium amplification method, Berridge demonstrated that hormones stimulated a rapid formation of IP3, which led him to propose that this metabolite might function as a second messenger. Such a messenger role was rapidly verified when IP3 was found to mobilize calcium when injected into cells. It is now apparent that the IP3/calcium signalling system regulates a wide range of cellular processes such as fertilization, secretion, metabolism, contraction, cell proliferation and information processing in the brain. This work has sparked a worldwide interest in the role of this signalling system in cell regulation. His most recent work has concentrated on the spatial and temporal aspects of calcium signalling. He was one of the first physiologists to provide evidence that the level of calcium might oscillate when cells are stimulated by a hormone. He also showed that oscillation frequency varied with agonist concentration, which led him to propose that the signalling system was frequency-modulated. Berridge's discovery of the IP3/calcium pathway provided an explanation of such oscillatory activity. His laboratory has been at the forefront of recent studies exploiting rapid confocal imaging techniques to characterize the elementary events of calcium signalling. This radically new understanding of how calcium signals are produced has provided new insights into both neural and cardiac cell signalling. Berridge became a Fellow of Trinity College in 1972 and was elected a Fellow of The Royal Society in 1984. In 1999 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. For his work on second messengers Berridge has received numerous awards and prizes, including The King Faisal International Prize in Science, The Louis Jeantet Prize in Medicine, The Albert Lasker Medical Research Award, The Heineken Prize for Biochemistry and Biophysics, The Wolf Foundation Prize in Medicine and The Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine. In 1998 Berridge was knighted for his service to science.
 
2Name:  Dr. Louis J. Ignarro
 Institution:  University of Callifornia, Los Angeles
 Year Elected:  2007
 Class:  2. Biological Sciences
 Subdivision:  201. Molecular Biology and Biochemistry
 Residency:  Resident
 Living? :   Living
 Birth Date:  1941
   
 
Louis J. Ignarro is a Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology at the UCLA School of Medicine and winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Medicine for his groundbreaking discovery of the importance of nitric oxide in cardiovascular health. In addition to the Nobel Prize, Dr. Ignarro has also received numerous other special awards for his research, including the Basic Research Prize of the American Heart Association, the CIBA award for Hypertension Research, and the Roussel Uclaf Prize for Cell Communication and Signaling. He has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and has published over 500 scholarly articles in his career. For nearly 30 years Dr. Ignarro's research has focused on the role of nitric oxide in the cardiovascular system. Among the most significant contributions from Dr. Ignarro's wealth of research is the discovery that nitric oxide is produced in the blood vessels and controls the flow of blood by signaling the vessels to expand and contract. A shortage of nitric oxide production, caused by poor diet and lack of physical activity, leads to the onset and increasing severity of cardiovascular disease, including heart attack, stroke, and high cholesterol. In addition, Dr. Ignarro's experiments in 1990 led to the discovery that nitric oxide is the neurotransmitter responsible for penile erection. The discovery made it possible to develop and market Viagra, the first oral medication for the effective treatment of erectile dysfunction. As a result of his role in this blockbuster drug, Dr. Ignarro is sometimes known as "the father of Viagra". In addition to continuing to lead an active team of researchers in his lab at UCLA, Dr. Ignarro now focuses on communicating the benefits of enhanced nitric oxide production to the general public. His goal is to wipe out heart disease using the scientific knowledge he has created. His work proves that almost all cardiovascular disease is preventable. Louis J. Ignarro was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1941, the son of uneducated Italian immigrants. He received a B.Sc. in chemistry and pharmacy from Columbia University in 1962, a Ph.D. in pharmacology from the University of Minnesota in 1966, and postdoctoral training in the Laboratory of Chemical Pharmacology at the National Institutes of Health in 1966-68.
 
3Name:  Dr. Baldomero M. Olivera
 Institution:  University of Utah
 Year Elected:  2007
 Class:  2. Biological Sciences
 Subdivision:  201. Molecular Biology and Biochemistry
 Residency:  Resident
 Living? :   Living
 Birth Date:  1941
   
 
Baldomero (Toto) Olivera was born in Manila, studied chemistry at the University of the Philippines, and received his Ph.D. from Caltech in 1966 working with Norman Davidson on the Biophysical Chemistry of DNA. As a post-doctoral fellow at Stanford University with I. R. Lehman, Olivera discovered and characterized E. coli DNA ligase, a key enzyme of replication and recombinant DNA technology. He returned to the Philippines in 1969, where he began to investigate pharmacologically-active peptides ("conotoxins") from the venoms of the predatory cone snails (Conus). Due to the unsettled political situation, he left the Philippines for the University of Utah in 1972 where he is now Distinguished Professor of Biology. There are ~100,000 different conotoxins; these have proven to be important tools for understanding ion channel and receptor function in nervous systems. Several conotoxins discovered in Olivera's lab have therapeutic applications, particularly for alleviating pain; one is an approved drug. Olivera's studies on cone snails have led to his present focus on the molecular and chemical basis of biodiversity.
 
Election Year
2007[X]