Photo credit: PotassiumChannel — File:Roderick MacKinnon, M.D. (cropped).jpg (Wikimedia Commons) · CC BY-SA 3.0
Roderick MacKinnon
born 1956 · United States · Contemporary
Nobel Chemistry 2003
American biophysicist and physician who showed, atom by atom, how ion channels select and conduct potassium.
Nobel Prize work
Shared the prize with Peter Agre for structural and mechanistic studies of ion channels. MacKinnon solved the X-ray structure of a potassium channel, revealing the selectivity filter that lets K⁺ ions pass millions per second while excluding smaller Na⁺ ions.
Fields
Related topics
Protein structure and function
A protein is a sequence that folds into a shape; its surface and flexibility help determine what it can bind or catalyse.
Cryo-EM, protein crystallography
Structural biologists infer molecular architecture from scattered electrons or X-ray diffraction, with distinct sample preparation and data-processing limits.