Laureate Biography
Roderick MacKinnon received half of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for generating startling images of the structure and intricate workings of ion channels in cell membranes. MacKinnon’s work has led to a greater understanding of how ions flow in and out of these cellular gateways to regulate vital functions, such as nerve signalling and muscle control.
MacKinnon was born during a blizzard on 19 February 1956 in Burlington, Massachusetts, the fourth of seven children. His mother was a part-time teacher, but spent most of her time raising her large family; his father was a postal worker and later a programmer for IBM.
Both parents stressed the importance of reading and putting effort into studies. MacKinnon was a curious child who enjoyed discovering how things worked and passing this information on to those around him, to such an extent that his exasperated father once told him he was a “compendium of useless information”. From the moment he received a microscope MacKinnon began to examine whatever he could find, from blades of grass to pond microorganisms. However, it was from his high school gymnastics coach that he learned his future work ethic, the idea of perfection through practice.
MacKinnon began his undergraduate degree at the University of Massachusetts, but after a year he transferred to Brandeis University. It was there that he discovered his passion for science, and he majored in Biochemistry. In a Physics class at Brandeis he met an organic chemist called Alice Lee, who he later married. MacKinnon then completed a medical degree at Tufts University School of Medicine, and studied Internal Medicine at the Beth Israel Hospital (now Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center), a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School.
Realising that he was more interested in scientific research than in medicine, MacKinnon returned to Brandeis for his postdoctoral studies in 1986. He began working on the biophysics of potassium ion channels, and he continued this line of research when he accepted the position of Assistant Professor of Physiology at Harvard Medical School in 1989.
Despite successfully revealing some secrets about ion channel structure, MacKinnon became convinced that to really understand the channels he was studying, he needed to see them using X-ray crystallography, the technique that had previously unmasked the structures of DNA and proteins like haemoglobin. This was seen by the research community as being mission impossible; the method relies on forming crystals of the protein to be studied, but researchers had been unable to get anywhere near enough quantities of channel proteins buried within the cell membrane for effective crystallization.
Regardless, MacKinnon decided to learn methods for protein purification and X-ray crystallography, and he moved to the Rockefeller University in 1996. Few people wanted to be part of his new project, so the team consisted of just two others, a new postdoctoral scientist and his wife Alice. However, MacKinnon’s risk proved successful. In 1998, he stunned the research community by publishing a paper that showed the molecular structure of the potassium ion channel in three dimensions. From this, MacKinnon revealed how the channels operate in fine detail, for instance how potassium ions queue up within ion channels, how potassium ions are allowed through while other ions like sodium are not, and how the channel can be opened and closed by a sensor depending on the conditions inside the cell itself.
MacKinnon remains at the Rockefeller University, and is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. In his spare time, MacKinnon says he reads books on the history of mathematics and science, to work out how scientists in the past came across the problems they solved, and how exactly they approached their problems.
Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2003
Roderick MacKinnon’s Nobel Lecture
Roderick MacKinnon’s lab page
Wikipedia: Roderick MacKinnon
