Richard Henderson
Richard Henderson (born 19 July 1945) is a Scottish molecular biologist and biophysicist. He is a pioneer in the field of electron microscopy of biological molecules. He shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2017 with Jacques Dubochet and Joachim Frank.
Richard Henderson | |
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.jpg) Henderson during Nobel Prize press conference in Stockholm in 2017 | |
| Born | 19 July 1945 Edinburgh, Scotland |
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| Known for | Cryo-electron microscopy |
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| Thesis | X-Ray Analysis of α-chymotrysin: Substrate and Inhibitor Binding (1970) |
Henderson has worked at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology (MRC LMB) in Cambridge since 1973, and was its director between 1996 and 2006. He was also a visiting professor at the Miller Institute of the University of California, Berkeley in Spring 1993.[2]
He worked out the structure of bacteriorhodopsin, a molecule in bacteria.[3] The molecule captures energy from light, and uses it to move protons out of the cell. This was the second ever atomic model of a membrane protein. The techniques Henderson developed for electron crystallography are still in use.
Henderson's methods help to solve the structures of several G protein–coupled receptors (GPCRs). They are a large protein family of receptors that detect molecules outside the cell. They activate internal signal transduction pathways. This leads to cell responses to the molecules outside the cell.