| Citation | Department of Physiology, University of California, San Francisco
Prof. David Morgan has made several major contributions to our knowledge of the enzymes and biochemical mechanisms that control the events of the eukaryotic cell cycle, particularly with regard to the cyclin-dependent protein kinases (Cdks). His laboratory identified proteins that help regulate these kinases and was involved in the first studies of their structure by crystallography. With the aid of novel proteome-screening technologies, he identified large numbers of cellular substrates for Cdks and demonstrated that the activity and substrate specificity of Cdks is regulated by their associated regulatory subunits, the cyclins. Other recent work has led to important insights into the biochemical mechanisms controlling other cell-cycle regulators, including the ubiquitin ligase APC. Throughout this work Prof. Morgan has applied rigorous quantitative approaches to provide a detailed mechanistic view of cell cycle control systems.
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