European Latsis Prize 2000

The European Science Foundation has awarded this year’s European Latsis Prize to Professor Kenneth Charles Holmes, Director of the Max Planck Institut für medizinische Forschung in Heidelberg, for his outstanding contributions to structural biology, studies of great scientific and social significance for European progress.

The European Latsis Prize, of a value of 100.000 Swiss Francs (65.000 €) is financed by the Latsis Foundation and awarded by the ESF to an individual or group who, in the opinion of their peers, has made the greatest contribution to a particular field of European research. The chosen field of the 2000 prize was "Molecular Structure".

Throughout his long career, Professor Kenneth Charles Holmes has been a major figure in structural biology. He was a pioneer in the development of both theoretical and experimental X-ray diffraction methods for elucidating the structures of biological macromolecules. His work in the 1960’s on the development of stronger X-ray sources paved the way for the novel use of synchrotron radiation as an X-ray source for the studies of the structure of matter, particularly for biological structures. His work has been essential for revealing the atomic structures of the proteins actin and myosin in muscle. He is acknowledged as a leading authority on the mechanism by which the contractile protein components of muscle turn the chemical energy of ATP into work.

Kenneth Holmes started his career in 1955 with Rosalind Franklin at Birkbeck College, London working on the structure of tobacco mosaic virus. In this work he pioneered the development of methods for fibre diffraction. After a subsequent sojourn in Boston, where he became acquainted with muscle research, he moved in 1962 to the newly opened Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. Here he deepened his interest in the structure of muscle. However, it became clear that progress could only come about by the use of much more intense X-ray sources than were then currently available. The best way forward seemed to be synchrotron radiation. The best synchrotron at this time was the Deutsche Elektronensynchrotron (DESY) in Hamburg. Thus he was encouraged to take up an offer of a Max Planck Directorship in Heidelberg and in 1968 he moved to the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research.

In the early 1970’s Kenneth Holmes and his student Gerd Rosenbaum were the first to build an optical bench for X-ray diffraction at a synchrotron. Their demonstration of X-ray diffraction from insect muscle using synchrotron radiation at DESY in 1971 was a major breakthrough. The results paved the way for the establishment of the EMBL outstation at DESY, Hamburg, where Holmes served as acting head during its founding years. Kenneth Holmes is considered the father of the use of synchrotron X-radiation for the studies of biological structures. In the last few years synchrotron X-radiation has assumed immense importance in structural molecular biology and is now indispensible for the study of structures of biological macromolecules and in drug design. It is central to the newly emerging field of structural genomics.

Synchrotron X-radiation has three outstanding properties, its intensity, its laser-like collimation and its polychromaticity. All these properties are of great importance in protein crystallography, leading to the dominant role of synchrotron X-radiation in this field. The ultimate promise of synchrotron radiation is in the ability to obtain high-resolution diffraction data from short-lived states of molecular interactions such as those between actin and myosin.

Kenneth Holmes’s main scientific interest has long been the mechanism of muscle contraction. In Cambridge in the 1960’s he studied insect flight muscle using X-ray diffraction in combination with electron microscopy. This research gave outstanding results showing how changes of orientation of the myosin "cross bridges" in insect flight muscle could be induced. These results were quickly incorporated into the standard cross-bridge cycle originating from Ed Taylor and Hugh Huxley, which set the scene for all future work on the contraction mechanism. The cross-bridge cycle envisages that the myosin cross bridges "row’" the myosin filaments past the actin filaments while consuming ATP. However, for many years the detailed molecular mechanism remained enigmatic. The breakthrough came from knowing the atomic structures of the component proteins, actin and myosin.

In 1990 Kenneth Holmes, Wofgang Kabsch and co-workers solved the structure of the actin molecule. Then Holmes used his unique experience of fibre diffraction to produce a model of the actin filament, which is an actin polymer. In 1993 he and a number of colleagues produced a molecular model of the actin filament ’decorated’ with myosin cross-bridges, the structure of which had been obtained by Ivan Rayment and collaborators. This model of the actin-myosin interaction has led to a detailed understanding of the molecular mechanism of muscle and how the chemical energy of ATP is converted into work. Professor Kenneth Holmes remains a world leader in interpretating structural information on actin and myosin, the basic contractile proteins of muscle.

The chairman of the Expert Committee for the European Latsis Prize 2000, Professor Gunnar Öquist, comments: "Professor Holmes has showed the way for structural biology in Europe and elsewhere and his scientific contributions are of outstanding quality and importance. He is a very worthy winner of the European Latsis Prize for the year 2000". For biographical details click here

Press contacts:

Jens Degett
Head of Communication and Information, ESF
+33 (0)3 88 76 71 32
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Notes for editors:

The European Science Foundation is the European association of 67 major national funding agencies devoted to scientific research in 23 countries. The ESF assists its member organisations in two main ways: by bringing scientists together in its scientific programmes, networks, exploratory workshops and European research conferences, to work on topics of common concern, and through the joint study of issues of strategic importance in European science policy.

Issued 20.11.2000

For further information contact  : Jens Degett typo3/esf_contacts_form.php?unit=2&contact=88

Category: Media Centre, Press Releases 2000