Dr. Richard Crowther FRS FMedSci

Dr Tony Crowther is Chief Scientist MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge. He has, over many years, pioneered methods for three-dimensional structure determination using electron microscopy and image analysis, applying these methods to many medically important structures. He was responsible for the structure determination of hepatitis B virus cores both by electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction, resulting in an atomic model of the virus cores. He has also analysed the structure of intact hepatitis B viruses by electron microscopy, and studied how antibodies and peptides that inhibit virus infections bind to the surface of the virus. In the second area of his most recent work, he has shown how the two proteins tau and a–synuclein aggregate to form filamentous inclusions in the neurons of Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease sufferers respectively. He has published numerous papers providing detailed analyses of clinical samples, samples purified from in vivo sources and samples produced by in vitro preparation from tau expressed in bacteria. Together, these have provided a very accurate overview of some of the molecular events in the most common neurodegenerative diseases.