MacKinnon, Roderick (1956– )

US physician and molecular biologist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2003 for research concerning channels in cell membranes and in particular for his work on the structural and mechanistic studies of ion channels. He shared the award with US physician and chemist Peter Agre.

MacKinnon expanded on the work carried out by Peter Agre in the late 1980s involving the transport of water and salts between cells. In 1998, he discovered a type of protein membrane that acted as a channel for salt ions. MacKinnon was able to show what the spatial structure of a channel for passing potassium ions looked like. This was the first example of an ion channel that had ever been discovered. The understanding of how salts can enter and leave cells is of fundamental importance in the study of function of the human nervous system and muscles.

MacKinnon was born in Burlington, Massachusetts, and received his MD from Tufts Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, in 1982. He joined the Harvard Medical School in Boston as an assistant professor in the department of cellular and molecular biology in 1989. He became an assistant professor in the department of neurobiology in 1991, before being appointed a full professor of that department in 1995. From 1996 MacKinnon was professor in the laboratory of neurobiology and biophysics at Rockefeller University, New York, and, from 1997, investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute there.