Mark Bretscher


Mark Steven Bretscher is a British biological scientist and Fellow of the Royal Society. He works at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, United Kingdom. He is currently studying how animal cells migrate.

Education

Mark Bretscher was educated at Abingdon School in Abingdon-on-Thames, from 1950-58. His two brothers also attended the School.. He then went to Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge in 1958 to study Chemistry.

Career

In 1965 he joined the staff of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology and then became Programme Leader. He was visiting professor in biochemistry and molecular biology at Harvard University and Eleanor Roosevelt Cancer Society Fellow and visiting professor, Stanford University. He was head of the cell biology division, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology at the University of Cambridge and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1985. Mark was Emeritus scientist from 2005-2013. He was the first to demonstrate the existence of oriented transmembrane proteins.
Bretscher's main contributions lie in the areas of the mechanism of protein biosynthesis, in the structure of cell membranes 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.

Family

His father was Egon Bretscher, the nuclear physicist. He is married to Barbara Pearse, another cell biologist. He lists his hobbies as "walking, creating wild environments, early English portraits and furniture."

Books containing references to Mark Bretscher