SPECIAL LECTURES: Monday 11 July
SEB Bulletin July 2005
Bidder Lecture: Ted Taylor (University of Birmingham)
Coming up for air: not a last gasp for comparative physiology
Ted Taylor is Professor of Animal Physiology at the University of Birmingham. He studied for a B.Sc. in Zoology and for his Ph.D. at Southampton University from 1958 to 1964. He then moved to Birmingham, initially as a University Research Fellow. Ted read his first paper to the Society for Experimental Biology at one of their regular January meetings in London in 1963. He had very little data but had made his own oxygen electrodes. Since then he has acted as Convener of the Respiration Group, member of the Animal Section Committee and Council and was Zoological Secretary from 1985-89. He has organised numerous sessions at Society meetings and given an uncountable number of talks, on a wide range of topics, characterised by a rapid and at times apparently chaotic delivery.
Ted's Bidder Lecture, entitled “Coming up for air” reflects his interest in the evolution of air-breathing and the works of George Orwell. Some of his earliest work was on crustaceans. Crabs and crayfish have had merely a “walk-on” part to play in the invasion of the terrestrial environment but their expeditions onto land entail some interesting answers to the problems of oxygen supply, acid-base regulation and water balance that they encounter. His vertebrate work has included study of the role the Xth cranial nerve, the vagus, in control of the heart. In the dogfish, a small shark, tonic, vagal control of heart rate includes an element of cardiorespiratory synchrony and this seems to depend on there being two locations for cardiac vagal preganglionic neurones (CVPN) in the brainstem. A relationship between heart beat and ventilation has now been established for mammals, with cardiorespiratory interactions being established in human babies just before birth. Testing the general hypothesis that beat-by-beat control of heart rate in all vertebrates is dependent on 2 locations for CVPN now involves Ted in frequent trips to Brasil, where comparative, integrative, pregenomic physiology remains a vital science. He readily acknowledges that whatever he has done has only been possible with contributions from many talented students and collaborators and regular trips to the pub.
Woolhouse Lecture: Russell Jones (University of California, Berkeley)
Getting on with life: Hormones give seeds a fighting chance in the survival game
Russell Jones was born in Wales and received his BSc and PhD degrees from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. In 1966, after one year as a post doctoral fellow at the Plant Research Laboratory at Michigan State University, he was appointed to the faculty of the University of California at Berkeley, where he is currently Professor of Plant Biology.
Jones' career has emphasized research with the plant hormones abscisic acid (ABA) and gibberellins (GA) using endosperm cells of seeds as model systems for understanding plant hormone action at the cellular level. Studies of cereal aleurone cells helped unravel the pathways of ABA and GA signalling. Aleurone cells synthesize and secrete copious amounts of enzymes such as a-amylases, and the abundance of a-amylase mRNA in aleurone cells enabled cloning of the gene in the early 1980s. This led to rapid advances in understanding the regulation of this gene by hormones.
Jones' laboratory also explores the cell biology of the aleurone cell with particular emphasis on vacuoles and oil bodies. These organelles provide the energy and building blocks for enzyme synthesis, and generate the reactive oxygen species that are responsible for programmed cell death in this tissue.