Russell Grant Foster,

CBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

, FRS FMedSci (born 1959) is a British professor of circadian

neuroscience Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions and disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, developme ...

, the Director of the Nuffield Laboratory of Ophthalmology and the Head of the Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute (SCNi). He is also a Nicholas Kurti Senior Fellow at

Brasenose College Brasenose College (BNC) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. It began as Brasenose Hall in the 13th century, before being founded as a college in 1509. The library and chapel were added in the m ...

at the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

. Foster and his group are credited with key contributions to the discovery of the non- rod, non-

cone A cone is a three-dimensional geometric shape that tapers smoothly from a flat base (frequently, though not necessarily, circular) to a point called the apex or vertex. A cone is formed by a set of line segments, half-lines, or lines con ...

, photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (pRGCs) in the mammalian

retina The retina (from la, rete "net") is the innermost, light-sensitive layer of tissue of the eye of most vertebrates and some molluscs. The optics of the eye create a focused two-dimensional image of the visual world on the retina, which then ...

which provide input to the circadian rhythm system. He has written and co-authored over a hundred scientific publications.

Biography

Education

Foster attended Heron Wood School in his native

Aldershot Aldershot () is a town in Hampshire, England. It lies on heathland in the extreme northeast corner of the county, southwest of London. The area is administered by Rushmoor Borough Council. The town has a population of 37,131, while the Alder ...

and studied at the

University of Bristol , mottoeng = earningpromotes one's innate power (from Horace, ''Ode 4.4'') , established = 1595 – Merchant Venturers School1876 – University College, Bristol1909 – received royal charter , type ...

and graduated with a Bachelor of Science (BSc) in

Zoology Zoology ()The pronunciation of zoology as is usually regarded as nonstandard, though it is not uncommon. is the branch of biology that studies the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and ...

in 1980. He also carried out postgraduate studies at the

under the supervision of

Brian Follett Sir Brian Keith Follett (born 22 February 1939) is a British biologist, academic administrator, and policy maker. His research focused upon how the environment, particularly the annual change in day-length (photoperiod), controls breeding in ...

, and was awarded a PhD in 1984 for his thesis entitled ''An investigation of the extraretinal photoreceptors mediating photoperiodic induction in the Japanese quail (Coturnix coturnix japonica).''

Career

From 1988 to 1995 Foster was a member of the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...

Center for Biological Rhythms at the

University of Virginia The University of Virginia (UVA) is a public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United States, with highly selective ad ...

, where he worked closely with

Michael Menaker Michael Menaker (May 19, 1934 – February 14, 2021), was an American chronobiology researcher, and was Commonwealth Professor of Biology at University of Virginia. His research focused on circadian rhythmicity of vertebrates, including contribu ...

. In 1995, he returned to UK and started his own lab at Imperial College, where he became Chair of Molecular Neuroscience within the Faculty of Medicine. He later transferred his laboratory to the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

to engage in more

translational research Translational research (also called translation research, translational science, or, when the context is clear, simply translation) is research aimed at translating (converting) results in basic research into results that directly benefit humans. ...

Scientific works

Transplanted suprachiasmatic nucleus determines circadian period

While at the University of Virginia, Foster and Menaker performed experiments where the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) was tested by neural transplantation of donor's SCN to a recipient with an ablated SCN. In the experiment, the donor was a mutant strain of hamster with a shortened circadian period. The recipient was a

wild-type The wild type (WT) is the phenotype of the typical form of a species as it occurs in nature. Originally, the wild type was conceptualized as a product of the standard "normal" allele at a locus, in contrast to that produced by a non-standard, "m ...

hamster. Transplantation was done the other way around as well, with wild-type hamster as the donor and mutant strain hamster as the recipient. After the transplantation, the formerly wild-type hamster displayed a shortened period which resembled the mutant, and the mutant-strain hamster showed normal period. The SCN restored rhythm to arrhythmic recipients, which afterwards always exhibited the circadian period of the donor. This result led to the conclusion that the SCN is sufficient and necessary for mammalian circadian rhythms.

Rods and cones unnecessary for entrainment

In 1991, Foster and his colleagues provided evidence that rods and cones are not necessary for

entrainment Entrainment may refer to: * Air entrainment, the intentional creation of tiny air bubbles in concrete * Brainwave entrainment, the practice of entraining one's brainwaves to a desired frequency * Entrainment (biomusicology), the synchronization o ...

of an animal to light. In this experiment, Foster gave light pulses to retinally degenerative mice. These mice were

homozygous Zygosity (the noun, zygote, is from the Greek "yoked," from "yoke") () is the degree to which both copies of a chromosome or gene have the same genetic sequence. In other words, it is the degree of similarity of the alleles in an organism. Mo ...

for the ''rd'' allele and were shown to have no rods in their retina. Only a few

cones A cone is a three-dimensional geometric shape that tapers smoothly from a flat base (frequently, though not necessarily, circular) to a point called the apex or vertex. A cone is formed by a set of line segments, half-lines, or lines conn ...

were found to remain in the retina. To study the effects of light entrainment, magnitude of phase shift of locomotor activity was measured. The results showed that both mice with normal

and mice with degenerate retina showed similar entrainment patterns. Foster hypothesized that circadian photoreception occurs with a small number of cones without an outer layer or that an unrecognised class of photoreceptive cells are present. In 1999, Foster studied light entrainment on mice without cones or both rods and cones. Mice without cones or without both photoreceptive cells (''rd/rd cl'' allele) still entrained to light. Meanwhile, mice with eyes removed could not entrain to light. Foster concluded that rods and cones are unnecessary for entrainment to light, and that the

murine The Old World rats and mice, part of the subfamily Murinae in the family Muridae, comprise at least 519 species. Members of this subfamily are called murines. In terms of species richness, this subfamily is larger than all mammal families ex ...

eye contains additional photoreceptive cell types. Later studies showed that melanopsin expressing photoreceptive retinal ganglion cells (pGRCs) were accountable for non-rod, non-cone entrainment to light.

Literary works

He is the co-author with writer and broadcaster Leon Kreitzman of two popular science books on circadian rhythms, ''Rhythms of Life: The Biological Clocks that Control the Daily Lives of Every Living Thing'' and ''Seasons of Life: The Biological Rhythms That Enable Living Things to Thrive and Survive''. He has also co-written a book titled ''Sleep: a Very Short Introduction.''

Awards and honours

Foster was elected a fellow of the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

in 2008. Foster was appointed

Commander of the Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established ...

(CBE) in the 2015 New Year Honours for services to science. Russell Foster was awarded with The Daylight Award 2020 in the category Daylight Research, for his clinical studies in humans addressing important questions regarding light.

Notable awards

Foster has received recognition from around the world for his discovery of pRGCs: * Honma Prize (Japan, 1997) * David G. Cogan Award (USA, 2001) * Zoological Society Scientific Medal (UK, 2000) * Edridge Green Medal (Royal College of Ophthalmologists, UK, 2005) * The Daylight Award 2020, for Daylight Research

References

External links

Foster webpage
at

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to th ...

* *
'Why do we sleep?" (TEDGlobal 2013)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Foster, Russell G. 1959 births Living people Scientists from Aldershot People educated at Alderwood School British neuroscientists Sleep researchers Chronobiologists Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Fellows of the Royal Society Fellows of Brasenose College, Oxford Alumni of the University of Bristol