Peter Anthony Lawrence (born 23 June 1941) is a British developmental biologist at the
Laboratory of Molecular Biology
The Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) is a research institute in Cambridge, England, involved in the revolution in molecular biology which occurred in the 1950–60s. Since then it has remained a major medical r ...
and the Zoology Department of the
University of Cambridge
, mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts.
Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge.
, established =
, other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...
.
He was a staff scientist of the
Medical Research Council from 1969 to 2006.
Education
Lawrence was educated at
Wennington School in
Wetherby
Wetherby () is a market town and civil parish in the City of Leeds district, West Yorkshire, England, close to West Yorkshire county's border with North Yorkshire, and lies approximately from Leeds City Centre, from York and from Harrogat ...
, and then at
St Catharine's College, Cambridge
St Catharine's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1473 as Katharine Hall, it adopted its current name in 1860. The college is nicknamed "Catz". The college is located in the historic city-centre of Camb ...
on a
Harkness Fellowship
The Harkness Fellowship (previously known as the Commonwealth Fund Fellowship) is a program run by the Commonwealth Fund of New York City. This fellowship was established to reciprocate the Rhodes Scholarships and enable Fellows from several cou ...
; he gained his doctorate as a student of
Vincent Wigglesworth
Sir Vincent Brian Wigglesworth CBE FRS (17 April 1899 – 11 February 1994) was a British entomologist who made significant contributions to the field of insect physiology. He established the field in a textbook which was updated in a number ...
[ ] for work on
''Oncopeltus fasciatus'' (milkweed bug)
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
A morphogen is a substance whose non-uniform distribution governs the pattern of tissue development in the process of morphogenesis or pattern formation, one of the core processes of developmental biology, establishing positions of the various ...
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
Antonio García-Bellido y García de Diego ForMemRS (born 30 April 1936 in Madrid) is a Spanish developmental biologist. His ideas and new approaches to the problem of development have been followed and pursued by many researchers worldwide. ...
. In this hypothesis, a set of cells collectively builds a territory (or "
compartment
Compartment may refer to:
Biology
* Compartment (anatomy), a space of connective tissue between muscles
* Compartment (chemistry), in which different parts of the same protein serves different functions
* Compartment (development), fields of cells ...
"), and only that territory, in the animal. As development proceeds, a "selector
gene
In biology, the word gene (from , ; "...Wilhelm Johannsen coined the word gene to describe the Mendelian units of heredity..." meaning ''generation'' or ''birth'' or ''gender'') can have several different meanings. The Mendelian gene is a ba ...
" 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
''Drosophila'' () is a genus of flies, belonging to the family Drosophilidae, whose members are often called "small fruit flies" or (less frequently) pomace flies, vinegar flies, or wine flies, a reference to the characteristic of many species ...
'' fly wing.
For the last twenty years he has been working, in collaboration with Gary Struhl on the development of the adult abdomen of ''
Drosophila
''Drosophila'' () is a genus of flies, belonging to the family Drosophilidae, whose members are often called "small fruit flies" or (less frequently) pomace flies, vinegar flies, or wine flies, a reference to the characteristic of many species ...
'', with the aim of understanding the design and construction of the epidermal patterns, particularly
planar polarity and cell affinity. His research has been funded by the MRC and the
Wellcome Trust
The Wellcome Trust is a charitable foundation focused on health research based in London, in the United Kingdom. It was established in 1936 with legacies from the pharmaceutical magnate Henry Wellcome (founder of one of the predecessors of Glaxo ...
.
[
]
Publications
Lawrence wrote ''The Making of a Fly'' in 1992, 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
Michael Bruce Eisen (born April 13, 1967) is an American computational biologist and the editor-in-chief of the journal eLife. He is a professor of genetics, genomics and development at University of California, Berkeley. He is a leading advocate o ...
discovered two booksellers were programatically setting increasingly higher prices for copies of the book on Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational technology company focusing on e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. It has been referred to as "one of the most influential economi ...
's used book market. European Commissioner
A European Commissioner is a member of the 27-member European Commission. Each member within the Commission holds a specific portfolio. The commission is led by the President of the European Commission. In simple terms they are the equivalent ...
Margrethe Vestager
Margrethe Vestager (; born 13 April 1968) is a Danish politician currently serving as Executive Vice President of the European Commission for A Europe Fit for the Digital Age since December 2019 and European Commissioner for Competition since ...
mentioned this event as an early example of algorithmic tacit collusion
Tacit collusion is a collusion between competitors, which do not explicitly exchange information and achieving an agreement about coordination of conduct. There are two types of tacit collusion - concerted action and conscious parallelism. In a ...
on March 16, 2017. The sellers eventually priced copies over $23 million before the feedback loop
Feedback occurs when outputs of a system are routed back as inputs as part of a chain of cause-and-effect that forms a circuit or loop. The system can then be said to ''feed back'' into itself. The notion of cause-and-effect has to be handled c ...
was broken.
Lawrence has also written commentaries on the ethics of science practice, and collaborated with Mark Bretscher
Mark Steven Bretscher (born 8 January 1940) is a British biological scientist and Fellow of the Royal Society. He worked at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, United Kingdom and is currently retired.
Educa ...
on the obituary of Francis Crick
Francis Harry Compton Crick (8 June 1916 – 28 July 2004) was an English molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist. He, James Watson, Rosalind Franklin, and Maurice Wilkins played crucial roles in deciphering the helical struc ...
published in ''Current Biology
''Current Biology'' is a biweekly peer-reviewed scientific journal that covers all areas of biology, especially molecular biology, cell biology, genetics, neurobiology, ecology, and evolutionary biology. The journal includes research articles, var ...
''.
Awards and honours
Lawrence was awarded membership of the European Molecular Biology Organization
The European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) is a professional, non-profit organization of more than 1,800 life scientists. Its goal is to promote research in life science and enable international exchange between scientists. It co-funds cour ...
(EMBO). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society
Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...
in 1983, awarded the Darwin Medal, and was a recipient of the Prince of Asturias Prize
The Princess of Asturias Awards ( es, Premios Princesa de Asturias, links=no, ast, Premios Princesa d'Asturies, links=no), formerly the Prince of Asturias Awards from 1981 to 2014 ( es, Premios Príncipe de Asturias, links=no), are a series of a ...
for scientific research. He was elected a Foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences ( sv, Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien) is one of the Swedish Royal Academies, royal academies of Sweden. Founded on 2 June 1739, it is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization that takes special ...
in 2000.[
]
Personal life
Lawrence married Birgitta Haraldson in 1971, a clinical psychologist and expert on autism.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lawrence, Peter Anthony
1941 births
Living people
Members of the European Molecular Biology Organization
British zoologists
Alumni of St Catharine's College, Cambridge
Fellows of the Royal Society
Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences