| Citation | Distinguished for his studies of genes which regulate the cell cycle in fission yeast and higher organisms. He developed techniques for transformation, gene replacement and expression vectors in the fission yeast S. pombe. He identified two major controls in the cell cycle and he cloned and characterized genes inovolved in commitment to DNA synthesis or mitosis notably the 'start' gene cdc 2. He showed that cdc 2 encodes a protein kinase which is potentially regulated by phosphorylation. He identified, cloned and sequenced the human equivalent of cdc 2 and showed that its sequence is extensively conserved from yeasts to man.
Together with Maller and Lohka, he has now shown that purified preparations of the vertebrate cell-cycle regulator 'maturation promoting factor' contain the product encoded by the cdc 2 homologue. |