Photo opportunity 3.50pm Friday 31 May, Medical Sciences Institute, University of Dundee.
Last year's Nobel Prize winner Sir Paul Nurse will deliver a keynote lecture at the University of Dundee on Friday 31 May just weeks before his co-Nobel recipient Dr Tim Hunt travels to the University of Dundee to receive an honorary degree at graduation.
Sir Paul Nurse, Chief Executive of Cancer Research UK and Dr Tim Hunt jointly received a Nobel prize with Leland H. Hartwell in October 2001, for their discoveries of key regulators of the cell cycle.
They made seminal discoveries concerning the control of the cell cycle, identifying its master regulators. These fundamental discoveries have had a great impact on our understanding of cell growth. Defective regulation of the cell cycle leads to the uncontrolled proliferation of cancer cells and to the chromosome alterations seen in tumours. This has opened up new possibilities for cancer treatment and the first drug developed by the Dundee-based company Cyclacel targets one of the enzymes discovered by Paul Nurse.
In the middle of the 1970s, Paul Nurse discovered the gene cdc2 in yeast. This gene was found to regulate different phases of the cell cycle. In 1987 Paul Nurse isolated the corresponding gene in humans called CDK. Nurse showed that activation of CDK is dependent on reversible phosphorylation, i.e. that phosphate groups are linked to or removed from proteins. On the basis of these findings, half a dozen related CDK molecules have been found in humans.
Dr Tim Hunt a colleague of Paul Nurse at Cancer Research UK, who shared the Nobel prize with him in 2001 will receive an honorary degree from the University of Dundee on Friday 12 July in the Caird Hall, Dundee. Tim Hunt and Paul Nurse were the first Britons to receive a Nobel Prize since 1993. Since his latest award Sir Paul has become a media celebrity appearing many times on TV and as the castaway on Desert Island Discs where he revealed his passion for motorcycling.
Sir Paul Nurse will deliver the School of Life Sciences flagship lecture, The Peter Garland Lecture, at 4pm on Friday 31 May in the large lecture theatre in the Medical Sciences Institute at the University of Dundee. Sir Paul has visited Dundee on several occasions in the past. In fact, he made his first presentation of the discovery of cdc2 during his first visit to Dundee in 1975.
Peter Garland, the first Professor of Biochemistry at Dundee, played a major role in building the remarkable strengths in Life Sciences and biomedical research in the University from 1970-1984.