| Citation | Dr. Colquhoun has made fundamental contributions to our understanding of drug-receptor interactions. He was the first, with J.M. Ritchie, to measure successfully the binding of tetrodotoxin to sodium channels in excitable tissues, and to establish reliable non-linear curve-fitting procedures for the analysis of binding data. His study of the quantitative implications of the '2-state' model for receptor activation was important in allowing this hypothesis to gain wide acceptance in place of the conventional 'occupation theory'.
His recent work on the kinetic behaviour of single transmitter-operated ion channels at the neuromuscular junction and other synapses, with Sakmann and Hawkes, has taken both the resolution and the statistical interpretation of these records to a new level; the kinetics of binding and of channel opening can now be resolved for the first time by taking advantage of the much-improved time resolution provided by the 'patch-clamp' technique. |