Background
BRETSCHER, Mark was born on January 8, 1940 in Cambridge. Son of Hanni Bretscher (nee Greminger) and Egon Bretscher.
head professor biological scientist
BRETSCHER, Mark was born on January 8, 1940 in Cambridge. Son of Hanni Bretscher (nee Greminger) and Egon Bretscher.
Mark Bretscher was educated at Abingdon School in 1951, followed by Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge in 1958.
He works at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, United Kingdom. He is currently studying how animal cells migrate. He was visiting professor in biochemistry and molecular biology at Harvard University (1974-1975) and Eleanor Roosevelt Cancer Society Fellow and visiting professor, Stanford University (1984-1985).
He was head of the cell biology division, Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology at the University of Cambridge and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1985.
Bretscher"s main contributions lie in the areas of the mechanism of protein biosynthesis, in the structure of cell membranes (especially that of the human red blood cell) and in how animal cells move. He is the principal protagonist of the membrane flow scheme for cell locomotion, which is largely based on how cap formation occurs.
Using the amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum as an animal for study, he has identified the first two genes whose protein products are required for this creature to migrate. His father was Egon Bretscher, the nuclear physicist.
He lists his hobbies as "walking, creating wild environments, early English portraits and furniture.".
Medical Research Council, Laboratory of Molecular Biology-, Cambridge since 1965.
Married Barbara M. F. Pearse in 1978.