Fellow

Nicholas Franks is head of biophysics at Imperial College and has pioneered studies on the molecular mechanisms of anaesthetic action. Using structural techniques, he ruled out the then prevailing lipid theory by showing that the changes induced in lipid bilayer membranes by clinically relevant concentrations of general anaesthetics were far too small to account for the pharmacological action. Addressing the possibility of protein targets, Franks, carried out an elegant programme of research on the fire fly luciferase enzyme and found that this protein’s function was as sensitive as whole animals to a diverse range of anaesthetics: he established that the mechanism of inhibition involved anaesthetic binding to a cavity on the enzyme. Next he turned his attention to the putative protein targets he had argues must exist, and identified an anaesthetic-activated potassium channel, and along with other laboratories, established the importance of the GABAA receptor. He has now begun to unravel how the molecular actions of anaesthetics translate into loss of consciousness by identifying the key neural substrates.