Sir Michael Berridge to speak on discoveries in calcium signaling

Sir Michael J. Berridge

Sir Michael J. Berridge, who has received some of international science’s highest awards for his discovery of the role of inositol trisphosphate as a “second messenger” in cell signaling, will visit the UW later this month as the Sterling Winthrop professor to present the 12th annual Edwin G. Krebs Lecture in Molecular Pharmacology.

He will speak on “Elemental and Global Aspects of Calcium Signaling” at 3:30 p.m., Monday, March 29, in room T-625 of the Health Sciences Center. The lecture is sponsored by the Department of Pharmacology and open to everyone.

Berridge is deputy scientific director at the Babraham Institute Laboratory of Molecular Signaling in Cambridge, England, and an honorary professor at the University of Cambridge.

He is best known for identifying, in 1984, a cellular signaling system based on the action of inositol trisphosphate. Inositol lipids exist in surface membranes of all animal cells, including even yeast cells. In simple terms, when a hormone or neurotransmitter such as adrenaline or acetylcholine (the “first messenger”) interacts with a receptor on the cell membrane, inositol trisphosphate is released within the cell, causing a calcium response important for cell growth and transmission of nerve impulses, among other processes.

Remarkably, Berridge discovered this widespread cell signaling system through his work seeking to understand how insect salivary glands control secretion. He was working at the Cambridge University Unit of Insect Neurophysiology and Pharmacology with blowflies at the time.

In recent years, Berridge and other researchers have focused on the role of inositol trisphosphate in controlling calcium signaling critically important for brain and nerve processes such as excitability, learning and memory. The inositol trisphosphate system may well have a role in neurological or psychiatric disorders, an aspect now under investigation.

For example, the success of the drug lithium in treating manic-depressive illness may be due to its action in preventing breakdown of inositol trisphosphate. In fact, Berridge discovered this action of lithium and used it in his research to help identify the second messenger role of inositol trisphosphate.

Berridge was born in Rhodesia and educated at University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland in Salisbury before moving to the University of Cambridge in 1960 to work toward his Ph.D. with Sir Vincent Wigglesworth. He completed postdoctoral research projects at the University of Virginia and Case Western Reserve University before returning to the University of Cambridge in 1969.

For his work on second messengers, Berridge has received several of the most prestigious international awards, including the King Faisal International Prize in Science, the Louis Jeantet Prize in Medicine, the Heineken Prize for Biochemistry and Biophysics, the Gairdner Foundation International Award and the Albert Lasker Medical Research Award, which he shared with Dr. Edwin Krebs of the UW and two other scientists in 1989. He was knighted for his service to science in 1998.

Krebs, for whom the lecture is named, won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1992 with Dr. Edmond Fischer, UW professor emeritus of biochemistry. Krebs is UW professor emeritus of pharmacology and biochemistry. He is known throughout the world for his pioneering work in unraveling the complex pathways by which hormones and drugs regulate cellular function.

Krebs, who maintains an active research program, first joined the School of Medicine faculty in 1948. He was chair of the Department of Pharmacology from 1977 until 1983. He has received many other honors for his fundamental work on protein kinases and their role in cellular regulation. ¶

Claire Dietz