This walk took him through a park and some rough land where he couldn't fail to notice the animals, insects and plants and how they changedduring the seasons. During winters, stars and planets in the sky attracted him. He watched in amazement Sputnik 2, the second ever artificial satellite and the first with the living cargo (a dog Laika) as it flew across the skies of London. Till date, he owns a telescope and regularly peers through it to catch a glimpse of universe. But, he is an amateur astronomer. His expertise lies in biology. And the seed was sown during his years at a secondary school.

Birth of a Biologist

At age 11 in 1960, he moved to an academic state secondary school, Harrow County Grammar School for Boys. It was a good, well-resourced school. Amid boys from posh backgrounds, he felt like a fish out of water. Here, he met an excellent biology teacher, Keith Neal, who inspired him to study natural history and do real experiments. He explored the pigments of different mutant fruit flies by following experimental protocols published in Scientific American.


After leaving school, Nurse moved to Birmingham University to pursue his biology degree. At that time, developmental biologists faced a nagging problem of how cells underwent differentiation. To young Nurse, cell cycle seemed to be a good and simple model for such problems, because the cell underwent molecular changes as it proceeded through its cell cycle. To study molecular changes during cell cycle, he joined Tony Simms at the University of East Anglia (UEA) who was looking at the enzymes of amino acid metabolism during cell cycle of the fungus Candida utilis. In 1972, he stumbled upon two papers from Lee Hartwell who showed how genetics could be used to study the budding yeast cell cycle.

This propelled Nurse to embark on similar study with yeast. Fortunately, he found a lab at the Edinburgh University where he met Murdoch Mitchison, an authority on the cell cycle. After a stint of senior fellowship at the University of Sussex, he took up a position of head at the Cell Cycle Control Laboratory at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (ICRF) (1984-1987) in London.

Dr. Paul Nurse was Iveagh Professor of Microbiology at the University of Oxford (1987-1991) and Napier Research Professor of the Royal Society (1991-1993). He returned to the ICRF in 1993, where he has been director-general since 1996.

By the beginning of the 2000's, Dr. Nurse shifted his focus to cell morphogenesis - the basic mechanisms that control cell shape. The topic is relevant to cancer, for when cancer cells metastasize, they must undergo a variety of shape changes in order to escape their primary sites and spread through the body. In 2001, he was awarded Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Leland Hartwell and Tim Hunt.

Dr. Nurse's current Research

Dr Nurse is currently a professor at the Laboratory of Yeast Genetics and Cell Biology of Rockefeller University, New York, USA. His research focuses on the molecular machineries that control cell division and cell shape. His contributions include the co-discovery of cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK) as the key regulator molecule controlling mitosis and S phase (resting phase between cell divisions), and his findings have had implications for understanding cell reproduction, cell growth, development and cancer.

Nurse's research has greatly broadened scientists' understanding of how cells divide and how cell division goes awry in diseases such as cancer. Nurse identified genes corresponding to CDK, paving the way for scientists to identify six different CDK molecules in human cells and to find that higher than normal levels of CDK characterize some human tumors such as breast cancer. Prof. Paul Nurse on video - Alan Alda, Brian Greene, and Paul Nurse introduce the World Science Festival on Charlie Rose - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfdSL8d0Qhg

Recent Publications:

1. Wu PYJ , Nurse P Establishing the Program of Origin Firing during S phase in Fission Yeast, CELL 2009 MAR 6;136(5):852-864
2. Greene B, Nurse P Science on the streets of the big apple, CELL 2008 MAY 30;133(5):757-758
3. Nurse P Life, logic and information, NATURE 2008 JUL 24;454(7203):424-426
4. Lygeros J , Koutroumpas K , Dimopoulos S , Legouras I , Kouretas P , Heichinger C , Nurse P , Lygerou Z Stochastic hybrid modeling of DNA replication across a complete genome, PROC
NAT ACAD SCI USA 2008 AUG 26;105(34):12295-12300 PMCID 2527905
5. Daga RR , Nurse P Interphase microtubule bundles use global cell shape to guide spindle alignment in fission yeast, J CELL SCI 2008 JUN 15;121(12):1973-1980
6. Carazo-Salas R , Nurse P Sorting out interphase microtubules, MOL SYST BIOL 2007 MAR;3():95
7. Hermand D , Nurse P Cdc 18 enforces long-term maintenance of the S phase checkpoint by anchoring the Rad3-Rad26 complex to chromatin, MOL CELL 2007 MAY 25;26(4):553-563
8. Neumann FR , Nurse P Nuclear size control in fission yeast , J CELL BIOL 2007 NOV 19;179(4):593-600
9. Castagnetti S , Novak B , Nurse P Microtubules offset growth site from the cell centre in fission yeast, J CELL SCI 2007 JUL 1;120(13):2205-2213
10. Petersen J , Nurse P TOR signaling regulates mitotic commitment through the stress MAP kinase pathway and the Polo and Cdc2 kinases NAT CELL BIOL 2007 NOV;9(11):1263-1272