The Physiological Society congratulates Professor Annette Dolphin FMedSci FRS, Professor Gero Miesenböck FMedSci FRS and Dr Linda Buck ForMemRS, on their election to Fellowship of The Royal Society.
Annette Dolphin is Professor of Pharmacology, Department of Neuroscience, Physiology and Pharmacology, Division of Biosciences, University College London. She is internationally recognised as one the world leaders in the field of neuronal voltage-gated calcium channels. She is distinguished for her work on the regulation of calcium channel trafficking and function, and the modulation of that function by activation of G-protein coupled receptors. Her work on the control of calcium channel trafficking by auxiliary calcium channel subunits has been particularly influential. She has brilliantly elucidated the topology and processing of this family of proteins. Professor Dolphin has been a Member of The Physiological Society since 1986. She delivers The Society’s 2015 Annual Review Prize Lecture in Cardiff on Tuesday 7 July at Physiology 2015.
Gero Miesenböck FMedSci FRS is Waynflete Professor of Physiology and Director of the Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour, University of Oxford. He pioneered the science of optogenetics. He established the principles of optogenetic control in 2002, using rhodopsin to activate normally light-insensitive neurons. He was the first to use optogenetics to control behaviour. These seminal experiments have provided a platform for an explosion in optogenetic applications. Recent honours testify to the significance of these findings. Miesenböck has exploited optogenetics in a succession of brilliant experiments illuminating synaptic connectivity, the neural basis of reward, mechanisms of sleep homeostasis and the control of sexually dimorphic circuitry. These incisive contributions to neuroscience have demonstrated the full potential of optogenetics beyond the proof-of-principle stage. He is currently a Reviewing Editor for The Journal of Physiology and has been a Member of The Society since 2009. He was awarded The Society’s Bayliss-Starling Prize Lecture in 2009.
Linda Buck is Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Full Member, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Affiliate Professor, University of Washington. Her research has transformed the field of odorant perception through the cloning of mammalian olfactory receptors. Together with Richard Axel, Buck developed an ingenious method to identify a G protein-coupled odorant receptor family of unprecedented size, comprising up to 1000 distinct genes members. Buck then used olfactory receptor genes as molecular tools to gain insight into the mechanisms and organisations strategies underlying odor perception. Her work showed that the olfactory epithelium is comprised of spatial zones that express different sets of receptor genes and that each zone is a mosaic of randomly interspersed neurons expressing different receptors. Buck then showed that individual olfactory neurons express a single receptor gene. In later work, Buck has documented the organization of olfactory axonal projections into the brain. Buck’s work has been recognised by award of the 2004 Nobel Prize. Dr Buck has been an Honorary Member of The Physiological Society since 2012.
Citations above recreated from The Royal Society