Ian R. Gibbons

For other people with the same name, see Ian Gibbons.

Ian Read Gibbons[2]
FRS
Born(1931-10-30)30 October 1931[3]
Rye, East Sussex, England[3]
Died30 January 2018(2018-01-30) (aged 86)[2]
Orinda, California, United States[2]
NationalityBritish
Alma materUniversity of Pennsylvania
King's College, Cambridge
Known forResearch in dynein
SpouseBarbara Gibbons (1961 to 2013)
Children2[4]
AwardsShaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine (2017)
International Prize for Biology (1995)
E.B. Wilson Medal (1994)
Scientific career
FieldsBiophysics
Cell biology
InstitutionsUniversity of California, Berkeley
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
Harvard University
Doctoral advisorJohn Bradfield[1]

Ian Read Gibbons, FRS (30 October 1931 – 30 January 2018) was a biophysicist and cell biologist.[5] He discovered and named dynein, and demonstrated energy source as ATP is sufficient for dynein to walk on microtubules. In 2017, he and Ronald Vale received the Shaw Prize for their research on microtubule motor proteins.[6]

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Great Britain in 1983. The Society stated:

He discovered, named and characterised the founding member of the dynein ATPase family of motor proteins and other microtubular components in cilia and flagella. By elegantly combining biochemical techniques with light and electron microscopy, he greatly advanced our understanding of microtubule-based motility, particularly by the direct visual demonstration of active dynein-dependent sliding between adjacent microtubules in structurally weakened flagella.[7]

Early life and education

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Gibbons's passion for science stemmed from his interest in radio. He entered Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School in Faversham in 1943, where he developed an interest towards applied physics. Following 18 months in the Royal Air Force as a radar engineer, he was admitted into King's College, Cambridge, in 1951 to read physics.[8] He graduated with a bachelor's degree and then, in 1957, a PhD degree from Cambridge. His PhD research concerns using electron microscopes to study the organisation of chromosomes during mitosis and meiosis. Gibbons then went to the University of Pennsylvania as a postdoctoral researcher, where he stayed for 1 year. He subsequently moved to the Department of Biology, Harvard University, to take up the post of director of the newly founded electron microscopy laboratory.[1][4]

Academic and research career

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While at Harvard, Gibbons studied the structure of cilia and flagella of a protozoan called Tetrahymena with electron microscopes. In 1963, he discovered a novel protein on microtubules and published its pictures.[9] Two years later, he purified two regions of the protein, known as its two "arms", naming the protein "dynein".[10] During his last year at Harvard, Gibbons demonstrated the protein making up microtubules was distinct from actin, in that the former was associated with guanine nucleotides while the latter with adenine nucleotides,[11] but refrained from naming it; Hideo Mohri from the University of Tokyo named it tubulin afterwards.[1]

Gibbons moved to the Kewalo Marine Laboratory, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, in 1967 as an associate professor. He found the cilia of sea urchin sperms easier to work with than the cilia and flagella of Tetrahymena. In 1969, he was promoted to professor of biophysics.[4][12] Throughout the 1970s, Gibbons and his wife Barbara showed the sliding of microtubules caused cilia motility (known as the sliding tubule mechanism), and that this sliding was dependent on the energy generated from ATP hydrolysis by ATPase. When microtubules visibly slid out of the ends of the flagellar fiber, the flagella disintegrated.[13] He then extended the mechanism to mammals, confirming the motility mechanism of bull sperm cilia is the same as that for sea urchins.[14] After these findings, Gibbons switched his focus to the molecular biology of dyneins, and determined the DNA sequence of the largest subunit of dynein in 1991.[15] In 1993, he became the director of the Kewalo Marine Laboratory.[4]

Ian and Barbara Gibbons retired from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in 1997; he went to the University of California, Berkeley as a research scientist in the laboratory of Beth Burnside. In 2009, Burnside closed her laboratory, and Gibbons became a visiting researcher.[4][12]

Honours and awards

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Personal life

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Gibbons met his wife Barbara while in Harvard University; they married in 1961.[1] Barbara died in 2013 at age 81.[20] Gibbons also died in 2018.[2]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d Gibbons, Ian R. (22 November 2017). "Discovery of dynein and its properties: A personal account". In King, Steven M. (ed.). Dyneins: The Biology of Dynein Motors (2nd ed.). Academic Press. pp. 3–87. ISBN 978-0-12-809471-6.
  2. ^ a b c d Sanders, Robert (14 February 2018). "Sunday (18 Feb.) memorial service for prize-winning biologist Ian Gibbons". Berkeley News. Retrieved 22 October 2018.
  3. ^ a b Gibbons, Ian R. (26 September 2017). "Autobiography of Ian R Gibbons". Shaw Prize Foundation. Archived from the original on 11 July 2018. Retrieved 22 October 2018.
  4. ^ a b c d e Sanders, Robert (25 May 2017). "Ian Gibbons awarded Shaw Prize for discovery of molecular motors". Berkeley News. Retrieved 28 October 2018.
  5. ^ Gibbons, Wendy E.; Vale, Ronald D.; Sale, Winfield S. (2019). "Ian Read Gibbons. 30 October 1931—30 January 2018". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 66: 201–223. doi:10.1098/rsbm.2018.0034.
  6. ^ a b "Announcement of The Shaw Laureates 2017" (Press release). Shaw Prize Foundation. 17 June 2018. Archived from the original on 13 August 2017. Retrieved 24 October 2018.
  7. ^ See "Professor Ian Gibbons FRS" The Royal Society
  8. ^ "Autobiography of Ian R Gibbons". Shaw Prize Foundation. 27 June 2017. Archived from the original on 11 July 2018. Retrieved 25 October 2018.
  9. ^ Gibbons, Ian R. (18 September 1963). "Studies on the protein components from cilia of Tetrahymena pyriformis". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 50 (5): 1002–1010. doi:10.1073/pnas.50.5.1002. PMC 221963. PMID 14082342.
  10. ^ Gibbons, Ian R.; Rowe, Arthur J. (23 July 1965). "Dynein: a protein with adenosine triphosphatase activity from cilia". Science. 149 (3582): 424–426. Bibcode:1965Sci...149..424G. doi:10.1126/science.149.3682.424. PMID 17809406. S2CID 28941852.
  11. ^ Stephens, Ray E.; Renaud, Fernando L.; Gibbons, Ian R. (23 June 1967). "Guanine nucleotide associated with the protein of the outer fibers of flagella and cilia". Science. 156 (3782): 1606–1608. Bibcode:1967Sci...156.1606S. doi:10.1126/science.156.3782.1606. PMID 6067301. S2CID 24637615.
  12. ^ a b "Biographical Notes of Laureates". Shaw Prize Foundation. Archived from the original on 3 November 2018. Retrieved 31 October 2018.
  13. ^ Gibbons, Ian R.; Fronk, Earl (1 August 1972). "Some properties of bound and soluble dynein from sea urchin sperm flagella". Journal of Cell Biology. 54 (2): 365–381. doi:10.1083/jcb.54.2.365. PMC 2108873. PMID 4261148.
  14. ^ Lindemann, Charles B.; Gibbons, Ian R. (1 April 1975). "Adenosine triphosphate-induced motility and sliding of filaments in mammalian sperm extracted with Triton X-100". Journal of Cell Biology. 65 (1): 147–162. doi:10.1083/jcb.65.1.147. PMC 2111158. PMID 236318.
  15. ^ Gibbons, I. R.; Asai, D. J.; Ching, N. S.; Dolecki, G. J.; et al. (1 October 1991). "A PCR procedure to determine the sequence of large polypeptides by rapid walking through a cDNA library". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 88 (19): 8563–8567. Bibcode:1991PNAS...88.8563G. doi:10.1073/pnas.88.19.8563. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 52549. PMID 1833761.
  16. ^ "International Prize for Biology Past Recipients/Presentation Ceremony". Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. Retrieved 31 October 2018.
  17. ^ "E.B. Wilson Medal". American Society for Cell Biology. Retrieved 31 October 2018.
  18. ^ "Ian Gibbons". Royal Society. Retrieved 31 October 2018.
  19. ^ "Ian R. Gibbons". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Retrieved 2 November 2018.
  20. ^ Fleischman, John (23 July 2013). "In Memoriam – Barbara Hollingworth Gibbons". American Society for Cell Biology Post. Archived from the original on 11 August 2018. Retrieved 31 October 2018.
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