British zoologist
Peter Anthony Lawrence
FRS (born 23 June 1941) is a British developmental biologist at the
Laboratory of Molecular Biology and the Zoology Department of the
University of Cambridge .
[4]
[5] He was a staff scientist of the
Medical Research Council from 1969 to 2006.
[6]
[7]
[8]
[9]
Education
Lawrence was educated at
Wennington School
[2] in
Wetherby , and then at
St Catharine's College, Cambridge on a
Harkness Fellowship ; he gained his doctorate as a student of
Vincent Wigglesworth
[1] for work on
Oncopeltus fasciatus (milkweed bug)
[10]
Career and research
Lawrence's main discoveries lie in trying to understand what type of information is required to shape an animal and generate a pattern (such as on a butterfly wing or a fingerprint). He is the principal advocate of the idea that cells in a gradient of a
morphogen develop according to their local concentration of the morphogen and that this mechanism is used to generate patterns of cells. Together with
Ginés Morata , he has helped establish the compartment theory first proposed by
Antonio Garcia-Bellido . In this hypothesis, a set of cells collectively builds a territory (or "
compartment "), and only that territory, in the animal. As development proceeds, a "selector
gene " switches on in a subset of this clone of cells, and the clone becomes divided into two sets of cells that construct two adjacent compartments. Much of the evidence for the theory comes from studies on the
Drosophila fly wing.
[11]
For the last twenty years he has been working, in collaboration with Gary Struhl on the development of the adult abdomen of
Drosophila , with the aim of understanding the design and construction of the epidermal patterns, particularly
planar polarity and cell affinity.
[12] His research has been funded by the MRC and the
Wellcome Trust .
[1]
Publications
Lawrence wrote The Making of a Fly in 1992,
[2]
[3] which explains how the body plans of flies and higher animals, like humans, are constructed. The book received "further" recognition in April 2011 when fellow biologist
Michael Eisen discovered two booksellers were programmatically setting increasingly higher prices for copies of the book on
Amazon.com 's used book market.
European Commissioner
Margrethe Vestager mentioned this event as an early example of
algorithmic tacit collusion on March 16, 2017.
[13]
[14] The sellers eventually priced copies over $23 million before the
feedback loop was broken.
[15]
[16]
[17]
[18]
Lawrence has also written commentaries on the ethics of science practice,
[19]
[20]
[21]
[22] and collaborated with
Mark Bretscher on the obituary of
Francis Crick published in
Current Biology .
[23]
[24]
Awards and honours
Lawrence was awarded membership of the
European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO).[
when? ]
[25] He was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society in 1983, awarded the Darwin Medal, and was a recipient of the
Prince of Asturias Prize for scientific research. He was elected a Foreign member of the
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 2000.
[1]
Personal life
Lawrence married Birgitta Haraldson in 1971,
[2] a clinical psychologist and expert on autism.[
citation needed ]
References
^
a
b
c
d Vicente, Catarina (2016).
"An interview with Peter Lawrence" .
Development . 143 (2): 183–185.
doi :
10.1242/dev.133769 .
ISSN
0950-1991 .
PMID
26786208 . (subscription required)
^
a
b
c
d
e
"LAWRENCE, Peter Anthony" .
Who's Who . Vol. 2013 (online
Oxford University Press ed.). Oxford: A & C Black. (Subscription or
UK public library membership required.)
^
a
b Lawrence, Peter (1992).
The making of a fly: the genetics of animal design . Oxford: Blackwell Science.
ISBN
978-0-632-03048-4 .
^
Peter Anthony Lawrence publications from
Europe PubMed Central
^ Lawrence, Peter A. (2017).
"The Making of a Fly" . making-of-a-fly.me .
^ Crick, Francis; Lawrence, Peter (1975). "Compartments and polyclones in insect development".
Science . 189 (4200): 340–347.
Bibcode :
1975Sci...189..340C .
doi :
10.1126/science.806966 .
PMID
806966 .
^ Morata, G.; Lawrence, P. (1975). "Control of compartment development by the engrailed gene in Drosophila". Nature . 255 (5510): 614–617.
Bibcode :
1975Natur.255..614M .
doi :
10.1038/255614a0 .
PMID
1134551 .
S2CID
4299506 .
^ Lawrence, P.; Struhl, G. (1996).
"Morphogens, compartments, and pattern: Lessons from drosophila?" .
Cell . 85 (7): 951–961.
doi :
10.1016/S0092-8674(00)81297-0 .
PMID
8674123 .
S2CID
3006792 .
^ John Finch; 'A Nobel Fellow on Every Floor', Medical Research Council 2008, 381 pp,
ISBN
978-1-84046-940-0 .
^ Lawrence, Peter A. (1966). "Development and determination of hairs and bristles in the milkweed bug, Oncopeltus fasciatus (Lygaeidae, Hemiptera)".
Journal of Cell Science . 1 (4): 475–498.
doi :
10.1242/jcs.1.4.475 .
PMID
5956722 .
^ "Genetics of Animal Design", LVMH Science for Art Abstracts.
^
"Gary Struhl's web site" . Archived from
the original on 4 October 2000. Retrieved 3 November 2007 .
^ VESTAGER, Margrethe (2017).
"Algorithms and competition" (Bundeskartellamt 18th Conference on Competition) .
European Commission . Retrieved 1 May 2021 .
^
"Horizontal Restraint Regulations in the EU and the US in the Era of Algorithmic Tacit Collusion" . Journal of Law and Jurisprudence . 13 June 2018.
doi :
10.14324/111.2052-1871.098 .
^ Sutter, John (25 April 2011).
"Amazon seller lists book at $23,698,655.93 -- plus shipping" .
CNN . Retrieved 26 April 2011 .
^ Farrell, Nick (25 April 2011).
"Amazon listed text book for $23 million – Sellers using Algorithms to set prices" . Archived from
the original on 27 April 2011. Retrieved 26 April 2011 .
^ Eaton, Nick (25 April 2011).
"The perils of automatic pricing on Amazon" .
Seattle Post-Intelligencer . Retrieved 26 April 2011 .
^ Eisen, Michael (22 April 2011).
"Amazon's $23,698,655.93 book about flies" . it is NOT junk: (blog of
Michael Eisen ) . Retrieved 26 April 2011 .
^
Peter Anthony Lawrence publications indexed by
Google Scholar
^ Lawrence, P. A. (2006).
"Men, Women, and Ghosts in Science" .
PLOS Biology . 4 (1): e19.
doi :
10.1371/journal.pbio.0040019 .
PMC
1326282 .
PMID
16535774 .
^ Lawrence, P. A. (2009).
"Real Lives and White Lies in the Funding of Scientific Research" .
PLOS Biology . 7 (9): e1000197.
doi :
10.1371/journal.pbio.1000197 .
PMC
2735719 .
PMID
19753105 .
^ Lawrence, P. A. (2003). "The politics of publication". Nature . 422 (6929): 259–261.
Bibcode :
2003Natur.422..259L .
doi :
10.1038/422259a .
PMID
12646895 .
S2CID
5304061 .
^ Bretscher, M.; Lawrence, P. (2004).
"Francis Crick 1916–2004" .
Current Biology . 14 (16): R642–R645.
doi :
10.1016/j.cub.2004.08.006 .
PMID
15324677 .
^ Lawrence, Peter (2009).
"Book review: A scientist unparalleled" (PDF) . Current Biology . 19 (22): R1015–R1018.
doi :
10.1016/j.cub.2009.10.016 .
S2CID
22621668 .
^
"EMBO member: Peter A. Lawrence" . people.embo.org .
Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research
1981:
Alberto Sols
1982:
Manuel Ballester
1983:
Luis Antonio Santaló Sors
1984:
Antonio Garcia-Bellido
1985:
David Vázquez Martínez and
Emilio Rosenblueth
1986:
Antonio González González
1987:
Jacinto Convit and
Pablo Rudomín
1988:
Manuel Cardona and
Marcos Moshinsky
1989:
Guido Münch
1990:
Santiago Grisolía and
Salvador Moncada
1991:
Francisco Bolívar Zapata
1992:
Federico García Moliner
1993:
Amable Liñán
1994:
Manuel Patarroyo
1995:
Manuel Losada Villasante and
Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad of Costa Rica
1996:
Valentín Fuster
1997:
Atapuerca research team
1998:
Emilio Méndez Pérez and
Pedro Miguel Echenique Landiríbar
1999:
Ricardo Miledi and
Enrique Moreno González
2000:
Robert Gallo and
Luc Montagnier
2001:
Craig Venter ,
John Sulston ,
Francis Collins ,
Hamilton Smith and
Jean Weissenbach
2002:
Lawrence Roberts ,
Robert E. Kahn ,
Vinton Cerf and
Tim Berners-Lee
2003:
Jane Goodall
2004:
Judah Folkman ,
Tony Hunter ,
Joan Massagué ,
Bert Vogelstein and
Robert Weinberg
2005:
Antonio Damasio
2006:
Juan Ignacio Cirac
2007:
Peter Lawrence and
Ginés Morata
2008:
Sumio Iijima ,
Shuji Nakamura ,
Robert Langer ,
George M. Whitesides and
Tobin Marks
2009:
Martin Cooper and
Raymond Tomlinson
2010:
David Julius ,
Baruch Minke and
Linda Watkins
2011:
Joseph Altman ,
Arturo Álvarez-Buylla and
Giacomo Rizzolatti
2012:
Gregory Winter and
Richard A. Lerner
2013:
Peter Higgs ,
François Englert and
European Organization for Nuclear Research CERN
2014:
Avelino Corma Canós ,
Mark E. Davis and
Galen D. Stucky
Princess of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research
2015:
Emmanuelle Charpentier and
Jennifer Doudna
2016:
Hugh Herr
2017:
Rainer Weiss ,
Kip S. Thorne ,
Barry C. Barish and the
LIGO Scientific Collaboration
2018:
Svante Pääbo
2019:
Joanne Chory and
Sandra Myrna Díaz
2020:
Yves Meyer ,
Ingrid Daubechies ,
Terence Tao and
Emmanuel Candès
2021:
Katalin Karikó ,
Drew Weissman ,
Philip Felgner ,
Uğur Şahin ,
Özlem Türeci ,
Derrick Rossi and
Sarah Gilbert
2022:
Geoffrey Hinton ,
Yann LeCun ,
Yoshua Bengio and
Demis Hassabis
2023:
Jeffrey I. Gordon ,
Everett Peter Greenberg and
Bonnie Bassler
International National Academics Other