| Citation | Distinguished for his seminal contributions to the immunogenetics of the rat and for identifying transporters required for MHC class I assembly. His scholarly incisiveness and critical mind is well illustrated in (and recognised by) his many invited viewpoint contributions and commentaries. In early studies, he established the recirculation and longevity of peripheral B lymphocytes and (with Wilson) was first to use thymectomised, irradiated, marrow reconstituted animals to study the properties of the T cell subsets. With collaborators, he derived monoclonal antibodies against rat MHC alleles - the first "useful" monoclonal antiboidies to be produced (a citation classic), and developed the concept of synergistic lysis with MAB pairs.
His studies on the rat MHC range from the derivation of congenic and recombinant strains to defining the class I and class II regions of the rat MHC at the molecular level. Contemporary with studies in other species, he established the existence of an important component of the assembly of the MHC - peptide complex. He identified and cloned the two genes coding for the molecule involved in transport of peptides for assembly with class I MHC molecules, thus opening a new and exciting area of transport and assembly of membrane proteins. |