MRC National Institute for Medical Research, London
Science for Health
John Eccleston (1943-2009)
02 October 2009
John Eccleston was an international leader in research on small G proteins, and the mechanisms of their interactions with effector proteins. He gained a high reputation for his development and application of fluorescent probes, especially guanine nucleotide analogues. John spent 25 years as a group leader at NIMR in the Division of Physical Biochemistry and formally retired just 6 months ago, though he remained a very active scientist until he became seriously ill very recently. He died aged 66 on 30th September 2009.
John began his academic career the hard way, earning his first degree over four years through the Graduate Membership education programme of the Royal Society of Chemistry at Warley Technical College and Liverpool Polytechnic. He joined David Trentham's small research group at Bristol University in a technical post and shortly afterwards registered for a PhD. During this time he made seminal contributions towards understanding the ATPase mechanism of myosin. In 1977 John launched his independent scientific career at the University of Pennsylvania, studying the enzyme mechanisms of the GTPases EF-Tu and EF-G that were involved in protein biosynthesis. This was a very percipient choice of research topic given all that we now know about the role of small G proteins in cellular regulation.
In 1984 he joined the staff of NIMR as a group leader and authored nearly 100 papers during his career at Mill Hill. He pioneered fluorescence anisotropy measurements to analyse protein association and dissociation in regulatory pathways - key events that are otherwise difficult to monitor in real time. The introduction of X-ray crystallography facilities to the Institute gave great impetus to John's science and led to very fruitful collaborations with the new crystallographers' research group, including three Nature papers in 1997. In the last five years he produced several papers in which seemingly intractable problems at the molecular level have been addressed, collaborating with research groups in the Virology and Parasitology Divisions.
No appreciation of John would be complete without a memory of the warmth, dry humour and friendship that John extended to all around him, and his careful and committed instruction and guidance to students at all levels. We extend our heartfelt sympathy to his wife Sally.
Justin Molloy, Steve Martin and David Trentham
John Eccleston
John Eccleston, ca. 1984
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