Tufts University: 175 Years of Innovation

Roderick MacKinnon, M82, won the 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on the structure and operation of ion channels. Throughout his education and career MacKinnon studied the potassium ion channel, an integral part of the nervous system and heart, and developed various methods of protein purification and X-ray crystallography. MacKinnon and colleagues were awarded the Nobel Prize for utilizing X-ray crystallography to determine the three-dimensional molecular structure of a potassium ion channel, uncovering what these channels look like and the process through which potassium channel selectivity occurs.