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£1.7 million for Professor of Biochemistry

Mike Geeves, Professor of Physical Biochemistry and Head of the Department of Biosciences at the University of Kent, has been awarded £1,728,990 by the Wellcome Trust for research that will enhance our understanding of the nature of diverse biological processes such as heart muscle function, cell division and hearing.

Specifically, Professor Geeves' research will be on the correlation between the cellular functions of the myosin family of molecular motors and their biochemical and structural properties. He explained:

'There are more than 20 different types of myosin involved in a range of cellular movements from the very fast wing beat of insects to the slow crawling of individual amoeboid cells such as white blood cells. Other myosins move organelles around inside cells, and yet others don't produce movement at all but generate forces inside cells and detect movements such as the response of the very fine stereocillia in our ear to sound waves.

'While we have a clear idea of how the myosin in muscle does its job, we do not know how the same basic motor protein is adapted for such a wide range of behaviours. This is what we plan to find out using methods that allow us to follow the fundamental molecular events that myosin goes through on a timescale of less than 1/1000th of a second.'

The five-year project will start in January 2009. It will be conducted in Professor Geeves' laboratory.

Sandford Bernstein, Professor of Biology at San Diego State University, USA, will collaborate with Professor Geeves on the project.

Contact: mediaoffice@kent.ac.uk

Story published at 12:13pm 24 September 2008