BSCB Newsletter Winter 2000

News: BSCB Hooke Medal

We are extremely pleased to announce that the BSCB has awarded its second Hooke Medal to Iain Hagan working in the University of Manchester. Iain will hopefully be able receive the medal at the Spring 2001 BSCB/BSDB joint meeting in Sussex.

Nominations for the next BSCB Hooke medal can be sent to Michael Whitaker, Secretary of the BSCB committee at any time. Nominations should include a brief resume of the nominee and a list of their recent relevant publications.

Iain Hagan: BSCB Hooke Medal Winner

The second Hooke Medal of the British Society of Cell Biology has been awarded to Iain Hagan for his work on mitosis in the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe. Iain has long been faithful to fission yeast, beginning with his PhD studies in 1984 under the guidance of Jerry Hyams and Paul Nurse. While a PhD student he cloned and characterised the fission yeast B-type cyclin, the product of the cdc13 gene, and also provided further insights into the connection between cell size and cell division.

With this flying start in the cell cycle field, Iain could have chosen the safe option and gone to do a post-doc in the UK or the USA, but instead made the courageous decision to go to Japan to work with Professor Mitsuhiro Yanagida at Kyoto University in 1989. Although Professor Yanagida is one of the foremost researchers in the fission yeast field, it was still very unusual for a European to go to Japan for a post-doc, but this sense of adventure and doing the unexpected is a characteristic of Iain in person and in his research.

The four years Iain spent in Japan allowed him to experience a different culture, to learn Japanese, and to make very significant discoveries in how the mitotic spindle is formed and regulated by kinesin motor proteins. The two Nature papers that Iain published on the cut7 kinesin-related protein were two of the first to identify this important class of motor proteins, and helped to open up this exciting area of research on how the mitotic spindle assembles through the action of motor proteins.

This period in Iain's life cemented his interest in the mitosis, and, after returning as a Cancer Research Campaign Return Fellow to set up his lab at the University of Manchester in 1993, he has continued to work on how the spindle is assembled and chromosomes are segregated. In doing so, Iain has developed the techniques for imaging mitosis in fission yeast, helping to make it one of the organisms of choice for cell biologists. His work on the manner in which the spindle pole body signals to the cell cycle machinery through the plo1 kinase, has been particularly influential, but it is typical of Iain's breadth of interest that he has also made important contributions to our knowledge of the role of the actin cytoskeleton in fission yeast conjugation.

Lastly, I should personally add that Iain is a great colleague to discuss ideas with - often as not in the bar - and his long standing and fruitful collaborations with a number of other colleagues testifies to his interactive nature. This was also recognised by the Human Frontier Science Program who awarded him a 10th anniversary medal, along with nine other former Human Frontier Science Program Fellows, to mark his scientific achievements after finishing their fellowship, and his promotion of international collaboration.

In awarding Iain the Hooke Medal the BSCB has recognised a rising star in British and international cell biology.

Jon Pines
Cambridge

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BSCB Newsletter

Winter 2000

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BSCB Hooke Medal Winner

Committee changes

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UKLSC Database

Cool pics wanted

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Where next, GMOs?

Cell Biology in Europe - Portugal

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BSCB Autumn Meeting Report

Thrombospondin Meeting