John Gurdon

significant hurdles that are only just beginning to be overcome. Complex cell behaviors, such as migration, result from coordinated activity of several individual component processes. While considerable progress has been made in identifying molecules related to migration and elucidating the mechanisms by which they function in a component process, understanding the integration of these various component processes presents a major challenge. Fortunately, technologies are emerging that allow us to study the spatial and temporal regulation that generates the coordination of these processes. These include biosensors that allow spatially resolved assays of signaling events in real time in living cells and photomanipulative techniques that allow local perturbations of function via photoactivation or inactivation to complement the observations made using biosensors. It is now clear that migration in vivo differs from that studied in vitro; this may reflect different signaling mechanisms or cellular mechanics. The development of three-dimensional systems that allow imaging of cellular and molecular dynamics is helping to reveal mechanisms underlying migration in physiological environments. Finally, the signals that initiate, guide, and stop migration are not well understood, especially in the context of the component processes of migration and their regulation. Cell Migration as a Discipline Until recently, research in cell migration was split into a number of subdisciplines that did not interact as an integrated research area. Over the past few years, cell migration has emerged as its own discipline. Recently, an NIH-sponsored Cell Migration Consortium was formed (www.cellmigration.org) with the aim of promoting migration research by addressing some major barriers to progress in the field. These include a census of the migration proteome, the structure of the supramolecular complexes that drive migration, development of novel signaling reagents that report spatially resolved signals in living cells, development of mathematical models of migration, development of novel imaging techniques, development of new biomaterials, and the production of knockout, knockin and knockdown mice and cell lines. Other Consortium activities include promoting interdisciplinary collaboration and organizing information in the field through a web-based cell migration knowledge database. Cellular motility driven by assembly and disassembly of actin filaments. (2000). Leukocytes navigate by compass: roles of PI3Kgamma and its lipid products. (2001). Human brain malformations and their lessons for neuronal migration. changed from classics to zoology. During graduate work under Michael Fischberg at Oxford, he was the first to obtain a normal adult animal by somatic cell nuclear transfer. He then spent a year on …