By Karen Hopkin Divide, Conquer Michael Glotzer’s built-from-scratch biochemistry, and do-it-yourself genetics and microscopy, have revealed some of the secrets of cell division. © Matthew Gilson Had it not been for that Saturday morning conversation, Michael Glotzer’s career would have taken a markedly different turn. Like all graduate students at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), Glotzer rotated thro

Michael Hall has always gone his own way—a path that has opened up the field of growth regulation.

By Karen Hopkin Genome Guru With some creative coding, Tim Hubbard has helped scientists see into the future of biomedicine. © Cate Gillon Tim Hubbard claims he knows nothing about genetics. But he was drawn into the high-stakes world of genomics by a job offer he couldn’t refuse. Hubbard had been working on algorithms for predicting protein structures at the MRC Centre for Protein Engineering in the Un

By Karen Hopkin Crossing Over Following his instinct, Douglas Bishop has tracked the mechanisms behind mismatch repair and homologous recombination. © Matthew Gilson Talk about a rite of passage: In his first job out of Amherst College in 1980, Douglas Bishop worked as a tech for a scientist who had neither an alarm clock nor a circadian rhythm. David Kurtz at Cold Spring Harbor had a habit of staying awake for 24 hours, sleeping awhile, and then repe

By Karen Hopkin Master Plans Sean Carroll earned his celebrity by stitching together the patterning that underlies much of the animal kingdom’s various shades and shapes. © Eric Tadsen Sean Carroll’s most flamboyant finding was prompted by an innocent query before a seminar. Carroll had gone down to Duke University to give a talk about his research on the genes and molecules that direct the regular spacing of bri

By Karen Hopkin Prokaryotic Pioneer Always a trailblazer, Susan Gottesman laid the foundation for two new fields in bacterial gene regulation. © Jason Varney | varneyphoto.com As an undergraduate at Radcliffe College—Harvard's allgirl sister institution—in the 1960s, Susan Gottesman earned pocket money working as a technician in Jim Watson's Harvard lab. "I would hear stories of people going to mixers at

By Karen Hopkin On the MAP By charting the unknown territory of cellular signaling—including the M.O. of the oncogene Ras—Chris Marshall has transformed the landscape of cancer research. © Charlotte Steeples In an exhibit on modern science at the London Science Museum sits a replica of Chris Marshall's inner sanctum. "They took photos of three different scientists' offices and recreated them there in the museum,

Bright Ideas Keith Moffat used his background in physics to tinker with tools that light up molecules in motion. By Karen Hopkin © Matthew Gilson As an undergraduate at the University of Edinburgh in the early 1960s, Keith Moffat studied physics. "Physics, physics, and more physics," he says. But when it came time to graduate, Moffat was looking to expand his horizons. Bill Cochran, a new professor who'd just arrived from Cambridge, s

Fired Up Besides hobnobbing with musical greats as an electric guitarist, Len Kaczmarek has fine-tuned the picture of how phosphorylation can alter neurons' electrical properties. By Karen Hopkin © Jason varney | Varneyphoto.com According to a former student, Len Kaczmarek is fond of noting: "Eric Clapton and I used to play the same clubs. Then our careers diverged." And it's true. Kaczmarek opened for Eric Clapton at Eel Pie Islan

Shiv Grewal has seen both late nights and early mornings in the lab – and connections between seemingly disparate elements that other molecular biologists might miss.

Nancy Jenkins' decision to combine molecular biology with formal genetics uncovered key mutations involved in development and cancer. Plus, the couple that publishes (700+ papers) together, stays together - just ask her husband, Neal Copeland.

After trial-by-fire training during the feverish early days of HIV research, Amanda Fisher has kept up the pace in the hot fields of epigenetics and nuclear reprogramming.