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History

By Charles Gooley M.S.
Software Engineer and Physical Organic Chemist
Web Developer and GIS specialist
Los Angeles, CA

Sir Paul Maxime Nurse is an English geneticist, former President of the Royal Society and Chief Executive and Director of the Francis Crick Institute. He was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine along with Leland Hartwell and Tim Hunt for their discoveries of protein molecules that control the division of cells in the cell-division cycle, the series of events that take place in a cell that cause it to divide into two daughter cells. These events include the duplication of its DNA and some of its organelles in a process called cell division.
Nurse identified the gene cdc2 in fission yeast, a species of yeast used in traditional brewing and as a model organism in molecular and cell biology. This gene controls the progression of the cell cycle through the various phases of cell division. Working in fission yeast, Nurse used the gene cdc2 to describe the transitions from G1 to S, when the cell grows in preparation for the duplication of DNA, and G2 to M, when the cell undergoes mitosis and divides. Since accurate duplication of the genome is critical to successful cell division, the processes that occur during these phases are tightly regulated and widely conserved while the cell’s DNA is replicated.

In addition, he found the corresponding gene, cdk1, in humans.

Nurse is known for being the author of the book What is Life which is an accessible summary of the most important historical and current scientific insights on this question.