Eileen Southgate

Eileen Southgate
NationalityBritish
Known formapping C. elegans nervous system
Scientific career
FieldsBiology, Biochemistry
InstitutionsMedical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology
Academic advisorsMax Perutz, Sydney Brenner, Vernon Ingram

Eileen Southgate is a British biologist who mapped the complete nervous system of the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans), together with John White, Nichol Thomson, and Sydney Brenner. The work, done largely by hand-tracing thousands of serial section electron micrographs, was the first complete nervous system map of any animal[1] and it helped establish C. elegans as a model organism.[2] Among other projects carried out as a laboratory assistant at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology (MRC-LMB), Southgate contributed to work on solving the structure of hemoglobin with Max Perutz and John Kendrew,[3] and investigating the causes of sickle cell disease with Vernon Ingram.[4]

  1. ^ Emmons, Scott W. (2015-04-19). "The beginning of connectomics: a commentary on White et al. (1986) 'The structure of the nervous system of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans'". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 370 (1666): 20140309. doi:10.1098/rstb.2014.0309. ISSN 0962-8436. PMC 4360118. PMID 25750233.
  2. ^ Ankeny, Rachel A. (June 2001). "The natural history of Caenorhabditis elegans research". Nature Reviews Genetics. 2 (6): 474–479. doi:10.1038/35076538. ISSN 1471-0064. PMID 11389464. S2CID 10015950.
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference :1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Finch, John (2013-11-11). A Nobel Fellow on Every Floor: A History of the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology. Icon Books. ISBN 978-1-84831-670-6.