Peter Anthony Lawrence

Last updated

Peter Lawrence

FRS
Born
Peter Anthony Lawrence

(1941-06-23) 23 June 1941 (age 82) [1]
Education Wennington School
Alma mater University of Cambridge (BA, PhD)
Known forWork on Drosophila melanogaster [2]
Spouse
Birgitta Haraldson
​
(m. 1971)​
[1]
Awards
Scientific career
Institutions University of Cambridge
Laboratory of Molecular Biology
Thesis The determination and development of hairs and bristles in the milkweed bug (Oncopeltus fasciatus Dall)  (1966)
Doctoral advisor Vincent Wigglesworth [3]
Website making-of-a-fly.me
www.zoo.cam.ac.uk/directory/peter-lawrence

Peter Anthony Lawrence FRS (born 23 June 1941) is a British developmental biologist at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology and the Zoology Department of the University of Cambridge. [4] [5] He was a staff scientist of the Medical Research Council from 1969 to 2006. [6] [7] [8] [9]

Contents

Education

Lawrence was educated at Wennington School [1] in Wetherby, and then at St Catharine's College, Cambridge on a Harkness Fellowship; he gained his doctorate as a student of Vincent Wigglesworth [3] for work on Oncopeltus fasciatus (milkweed bug) [10]

Career and research

Lawrence's main discoveries lie in trying to understand what type of information is required to shape an animal and generate a pattern (such as on a butterfly wing or a fingerprint). He is the principal advocate of the idea that cells in a gradient of a morphogen develop according to their local concentration of the morphogen and that this mechanism is used to generate patterns of cells. Together with Ginés Morata, he has helped establish the compartment theory first proposed by Antonio Garcia-Bellido. In this hypothesis, a set of cells collectively builds a territory (or "compartment"), and only that territory, in the animal. As development proceeds, a "selector gene" switches on in a subset of this clone of cells, and the clone becomes divided into two sets of cells that construct two adjacent compartments. Much of the evidence for the theory comes from studies on the Drosophila fly wing. [11]

For the last twenty years he has been working, in collaboration with Gary Struhl on the development of the adult abdomen of Drosophila , with the aim of understanding the design and construction of the epidermal patterns, particularly planar polarity and cell affinity. [12] His research has been funded by the MRC and the Wellcome Trust. [3]

Publications

Lawrence wrote The Making of a Fly in 1992, [1] [2] which explains how the body plans of flies and higher animals, like humans, are constructed. The book received "further" recognition in April 2011 when fellow biologist Michael Eisen discovered two booksellers were programatically setting increasingly higher prices for copies of the book on Amazon.com's used book market. European Commissioner Margrethe Vestager mentioned this event as an early example of algorithmic tacit collusion on March 16, 2017. [13] [14] The sellers eventually priced copies over $23 million before the feedback loop was broken. [15] [16] [17] [18]

Lawrence has also written commentaries on the ethics of science practice, [19] [20] [21] [22] and collaborated with Mark Bretscher on the obituary of Francis Crick published in Current Biology . [23] [24]

Awards and honours

Lawrence was awarded membership of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO).[ when? ] [25] He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1983, awarded the Darwin Medal, and was a recipient of the Prince of Asturias Prize for scientific research. He was elected a Foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 2000. [3]

Personal life

Lawrence married Birgitta Haraldson in 1971, [1] a clinical psychologist and expert on autism.[ citation needed ]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Morphogen</span> Biological substance that guides development by non-uniform distribution

A morphogen is a substance whose non-uniform distribution governs the pattern of tissue development in the process of morphogenesis or pattern formation, one of the core processes of developmental biology, establishing positions of the various specialized cell types within a tissue. More specifically, a morphogen is a signaling molecule that acts directly on cells to produce specific cellular responses depending on its local concentration.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Body plan</span> Set of morphological features common to members of a phylum of animals

A body plan, Bauplan, or ground plan is a set of morphological features common to many members of a phylum of animals. The vertebrates share one body plan, while invertebrates have many.

Mark Steven Bretscher is a British biological scientist and Fellow of the Royal Society. He worked at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, United Kingdom and is currently retired.

Compartments can be simply defined as separate, different, adjacent cell populations, which upon juxtaposition, create a lineage boundary. This boundary prevents cell movement from cells from different lineages across this barrier, restricting them to their compartment. Subdivisions are established by morphogen gradients and maintained by local cell-cell interactions, providing functional units with domains of different regulatory genes, which give rise to distinct fates. Compartment boundaries are found across species. In the hindbrain of vertebrate embryos, rhombomeres are compartments of common lineage outlined by expression of Hox genes. In invertebrates, the wing imaginal disc of Drosophila provides an excellent model for the study of compartments. Although other tissues, such as the abdomen, and even other imaginal discs are compartmentalized, much of our understanding of key concepts and molecular mechanisms involved in compartment boundaries has been derived from experimentation in the wing disc of the fruit fly.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology</span> Research institute in Cambridge, England

The Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) is a research institute in Cambridge, England, involved in the revolution in molecular biology which occurred in the 1950–60s. Since then it has remained a major medical research laboratory at the forefront of scientific discovery, dedicated to improving the understanding of key biological processes at atomic, molecular and cellular levels using multidisciplinary methods, with a focus on using this knowledge to address key issues in human health.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">BAR domain</span> Group of highly conserved protein dimerisation domains

In molecular biology, BAR domains are highly conserved protein dimerisation domains that occur in many proteins involved in membrane dynamics in a cell. The BAR domain is banana-shaped and binds to membrane via its concave face. It is capable of sensing membrane curvature by binding preferentially to curved membranes. BAR domains are named after three proteins that they are found in: Bin, Amphiphysin and Rvs.

Decapentaplegic (Dpp) is a key morphogen involved in the development of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster and is the first validated secreted morphogen. It is known to be necessary for the correct patterning and development of the early Drosophila embryo and the fifteen imaginal discs, which are tissues that will become limbs and other organs and structures in the adult fly. It has also been suggested that Dpp plays a role in regulating the growth and size of tissues. Flies with mutations in decapentaplegic fail to form these structures correctly, hence the name. Dpp is the Drosophila homolog of the vertebrate bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs), which are members of the TGF-β superfamily, a class of proteins that are often associated with their own specific signaling pathway. Studies of Dpp in Drosophila have led to greater understanding of the function and importance of their homologs in vertebrates like humans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eyespot (mimicry)</span> Eye-like marking used for mimicry or distraction

An eyespot is an eye-like marking. They are found in butterflies, reptiles, cats, birds and fish.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">French flag model</span> Biological model

The French flag model is a conceptual definition of a morphogen, described by Lewis Wolpert in the 1960s. A morphogen is defined as a signaling molecule that acts directly on cells to produce specific cellular responses dependent on morphogen concentration. During early development, morphogen gradients generate different cell types in distinct spatial order. French flag patterning is often found in combination with others: vertebrate limb development is one of the many phenotypes exhibiting French flag patterning overlapped with a complementary pattern.

A segmentation gene is a generic term for a gene whose function is to specify tissue pattern in each repeated unit of a segmented organism. Animals are constructed of segments; however, Drosophila segments also contain subdivided compartments. There are five gene classes which each contribute to the segmentation and development of the embryonic drosophila. These five gene classes include the coordinate gene, gap gene, pair-rule gene, segment polarity gene, and homeotic gene. In embryonic drosophila, the pair-rule gene defines odd-skipped and even-skipped genes as parasegments, showing 7 stripes in the embryo. In the next gene class, segment polarity gene, individual segments each have their own anterior and posterior pole, resulting in 14 segments. In the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, segment polarity genes help to define the anterior and posterior polarities within each embryonic parasegment by regulating the transmission of signals via the Wnt signaling pathway and Hedgehog signaling pathway. Segment polarity genes are expressed in the embryo following expression of the gap genes and pair-rule genes. The most commonly cited examples of these genes are engrailed and gooseberry in Drosophila melanogaster. The segment polarity is the last step in embryonic development and a repeated pattern where each half of each segment is deleted and a mirror-image is duplicated and reversed to replace that half segment; thus, forming a pattern element.

mir-279 is a short RNA molecule found in Drosophila melanogaster that belongs to a class of molecules known as microRNAs. microRNAs are ~22nt-long non-coding RNAs that post-transcriptionally regulate the expression of genes, often by binding to the 3' untranslated region of mRNA, targeting the transcript for degradation. miR-279 has diverse tissue-specific functions in the fly, influencing developmental processes related to neurogenesis and oogenesis, as well as behavioral processes related to circadian rhythms. The varied roles of mir-279, both in the developing and adult fly, highlight the utility of microRNAs in regulating unique biological processes.

Michael Levine is an American developmental and cell biologist at Princeton University, where he is the Director of the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics and a Professor of Molecular Biology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Markus Affolter</span> Developmental Biologist

Markus Affolter is a Swiss Developmental Biologist and Professor at the Biozentrum University of Basel, Switzerland.

<i>Homeotic protein bicoid</i> Protein-coding gene in the species Drosophila melanogaster

Homeotic protein bicoid is encoded by the bcd maternal effect gene in Drosophilia. Homeotic protein bicoid concentration gradient patterns the anterior-posterior (A-P) axis during Drosophila embryogenesis. Bicoid was the first protein demonstrated to act as a morphogen. Although bicoid is important for the development of Drosophila and other higher dipterans, it is absent from most other insects, where its role is accomplished by other genes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Evo-devo gene toolkit</span>

The evo-devo gene toolkit is the small subset of genes in an organism's genome whose products control the organism's embryonic development. Toolkit genes are central to the synthesis of molecular genetics, palaeontology, evolution and developmental biology in the science of evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo). Many of them are ancient and highly conserved among animal phyla.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ginés Morata</span>

Ginés Morata Pérez ForMemRS is Research Professor at the Autonomous University of Madrid in Spain and an expert in developmental biology of the fruit fly (Drosophila), a specialty he has worked on for over 40 years.

Gregory Stephen Xavier Edward Jefferis is a British neuroscientist known for his work on the circuit basis of olfactory perception in the vinegar fly, Drosophila melanogaster. He is a tenured Programme Leader at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge (UK) and associated with the Department of Zoology at the University of Cambridge.

Thomas Lecuit, born 4 October 1971 in Saumur, is a French biologist specializing in the emergence of forms or morphogenesis. He is a professor at the Collège de France, holding the Dynamics of Life Chair. He leads a research team at the Institut de Biologie du Développement de Marseille (IBDM), and the Turing Centre for Living Systems, an interdisciplinary centre dedicated to the study of living organisms.

Dragana Rogulja is a Serbian neuroscientist and circadian biologist who is an assistant professor in Neurobiology within the Harvard Medical School Blavatnik Institute of Neurobiology. Rogulja explores the molecular mechanisms governing sleep in Drosophila as well as probing how circadian mechanisms integrate sensory information to drive behavior. Rogulja uses mating behavior in Drosophila to explore the neural circuits linking internal states to motivated behaviors.

Gary Struhl is an American research scientist whose primary areas of research are developmental biology and genetics and genomics. He works as a professor at Columbia University Medical Center, teaching neuroscience within the Department of Genetics and Development.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "LAWRENCE, Peter Anthony" . Who's Who . Vol. 2013 (online Oxford University Press  ed.). Oxford: A & C Black.(Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. 1 2 Lawrence, Peter (1992). The making of a fly: the genetics of animal design . Oxford: Blackwell Science. ISBN   978-0-632-03048-4.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Vicente, Catarina (2016). "An interview with Peter Lawrence". Development . 143 (2): 183–185. doi: 10.1242/dev.133769 . ISSN   0950-1991. PMID   26786208.(subscription required)
  4. ↑ Peter Anthony Lawrence publications from Europe PubMed Central
  5. ↑ Lawrence, Peter A. (2017). "The Making of a Fly". making-of-a-fly.me.
  6. ↑ Crick, Francis; Lawrence, Peter (1975). "Compartments and polyclones in insect development". Science . 189 (4200): 340–347. Bibcode:1975Sci...189..340C. doi:10.1126/science.806966. PMID   806966.
  7. ↑ Morata, G.; Lawrence, P. (1975). "Control of compartment development by the engrailed gene in Drosophila". Nature. 255 (5510): 614–617. Bibcode:1975Natur.255..614M. doi:10.1038/255614a0. PMID   1134551. S2CID   4299506.
  8. ↑ Lawrence, P.; Struhl, G. (1996). "Morphogens, compartments, and pattern: Lessons from drosophila?". Cell . 85 (7): 951–961. doi: 10.1016/S0092-8674(00)81297-0 . PMID   8674123. S2CID   3006792.
  9. ↑ John Finch; 'A Nobel Fellow on Every Floor', Medical Research Council 2008, 381 pp, ISBN   978-1-84046-940-0.
  10. ↑ Lawrence, Peter A. (1966). "Development and determination of hairs and bristles in the milkweed bug, Oncopeltus fasciatus (Lygaeidae, Hemiptera)". Journal of Cell Science . 1 (4): 475–498. doi:10.1242/jcs.1.4.475. PMID   5956722.
  11. ↑ "Genetics of Animal Design", LVMH Science for Art Abstracts.
  12. ↑ "Gary Struhl's web site". Archived from the original on 4 October 2000. Retrieved 3 November 2007.
  13. ↑ VESTAGER, Margrethe (2017). "Algorithms and competition" (Bundeskartellamt 18th Conference on Competition). European Commission . Retrieved 1 May 2021.
  14. ↑ "Horizontal Restraint Regulations in the EU and the US in the Era of Algorithmic Tacit Collusion". Journal of Law and Jurisprudence. 13 June 2018. doi: 10.14324/111.2052-1871.098 .
  15. ↑ Sutter, John (25 April 2011). "Amazon seller lists book at $23,698,655.93 -- plus shipping". CNN . Retrieved 26 April 2011.
  16. ↑ Farrell, Nick (25 April 2011). "Amazon listed text book for $23 million – Sellers using Algorithms to set prices". Archived from the original on 27 April 2011. Retrieved 26 April 2011.
  17. ↑ Eaton, Nick (25 April 2011). "The perils of automatic pricing on Amazon". Seattle Post-Intelligencer . Retrieved 26 April 2011.
  18. ↑ Eisen, Michael (22 April 2011). "Amazon's $23,698,655.93 book about flies". it is NOT junk: (blog of Michael Eisen). Retrieved 26 April 2011.
  19. ↑ Peter Anthony Lawrence publications indexed by Google Scholar OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
  20. ↑ Lawrence, P. A. (2006). "Men, Women, and Ghosts in Science". PLOS Biology . 4 (1): e19. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0040019. PMC   1326282 . PMID   16535774. Open Access logo PLoS transparent.svg
  21. ↑ Lawrence, P. A. (2009). "Real Lives and White Lies in the Funding of Scientific Research". PLOS Biology . 7 (9): e1000197. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1000197. PMC   2735719 . PMID   19753105. Open Access logo PLoS transparent.svg
  22. ↑ Lawrence, P. A. (2003). "The politics of publication". Nature. 422 (6929): 259–261. Bibcode:2003Natur.422..259L. doi:10.1038/422259a. PMID   12646895. S2CID   5304061.
  23. ↑ Bretscher, M.; Lawrence, P. (2004). "Francis Crick 1916–2004". Current Biology . 14 (16): R642–R645. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2004.08.006 . PMID   15324677.
  24. ↑ Lawrence, Peter (2009). "Book review: A scientist unparalleled" (PDF). Current Biology. 19 (22): R1015–R1018. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2009.10.016 . S2CID   22621668.
  25. ↑ "EMBO member: Peter A. Lawrence". people.embo.org.
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