MRC honours 'grandfather of PPU'

The Medical Research Council's (MRC) protein phosphorylation unit (PPU) at the University of Dundee marked the 50th anniversary of the discovery of protein phosphorylation by Professor Edmond Fischer with a symposium in his honour on 10 March. The Nobel prize-winner, who celebrates his 85th birthday this year, was the guest of honour and keynote speaker.

In 1955 Professor Fischer and Edwin Krebs showed how muscles liberate energy from sugar stored in the body by a complicated cyclical set of reactions called phosphorylation. They also discovered that the process is reversible, enabling proteins to be regulated in both directions. Fischer and Krebs were awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine and physiology in 1992.

The MRC set up the protein phosphorylation unit in Dundee in 1990.