User:Jbelt21/Keith R. Porter

Keith R. Porter

Keith Roberts Porter (June 11, 1912 – May 2, 1997) was a Canadian-American cell biologist. He created pioneering biology techniques and research using electron microscopy of cells. Porter also contributed to the development of other experimental methods for cell culture and nuclear transplantation. He also was responsible for naming the endoplasmic reticulum, conducting work on the 9 + 2 microtubule structure in the axoneme of cilia, and coining the term "microtrabecular lattice." In collaborations with other scientists, he created concepts for other structures in a cell such as microtome cutting, compartmentalization in the cell, flagella, centrioles, fibrin, collagen, T-tubules and sarcoplasmic reticulum.

Early Life and Education

Keith Porter was born in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia on June 11, 1912, the son of Aaron and Josephine Roberts Porter. He finished his undergraduate program at Acadia University in 1934, and became graduate student at Harvard University. At Harvard, he earned a doctorate (Ph.D.) for his work on frog embryo development in 1938. Following this degree, he married Katherine Elizabeth Lingley, a former student a Acadia University. They had one son, Gregory, who passed away just over 1 year later. Starting in the early 1940s he conducted research at The Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York. He became a citizen of the United States in 1947.

Career/Research

In 1939, Porter was a research assistant at The Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research under James B. Murphy, a cancer researcher. Porter focused his early work in Murphy's lab on the effect of carcinogens on embryonic development of rat embryos. Because it was difficult for the these cells to fix properly to the slide, Porter concluded that osmium tetroxide preserved the cells the best. When Porter micro graphed the first cell, he noticed that only the thin sections could be seen. The nuclei region was a dark blob due to all the internal structures surrounding the nucleus. He needed a higher penetration power to see the thicker portions of the cell. Only small sections of thinly sliced cells were able to be micro-graphed, so Porter turned his attention to developing a way that whole cells could be photographed. In conjunction with Joseph Blum, he designed an ultramicrotome section off specific tissue thickness to allow the electron microscope to penetrate these cells. By 1956, he became a professor and full member at the Rockefeller University.

From 1961-1967, Porter returned to Harvard University and was chair of the Biology department (1965-1967). Porter's research at Harvard was focused on the sarcoplasmic reticulum and T system with Clara Franzini-Amstrong and microtubules role in motility, cell division, and shape control with Lewis Tilney, J. Richard McIntosh, and Ursula Goodenough-Johnson.

In 1968, Porter left to work as a chair for the new Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology at the University of Colorado Boulder. While at Colorado, Porter spearheaded a laboratory dedicated to a higher voltage (1000 kV) Electron Microscope that eased the ability to study whole cells due to its high penetrating power. When he retired, at age 70, the university awarded him an honorary degree and renamed “his” building Porter Biosciences.

Porter became a professor at University of Maryland, Baltimore County in 1984 before joining Peachey Lee's laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania in 1988 post-retirement. UMBC's Keith R. Porter Core Imaging Facility is dedicated to Porter.

Porter helped found the American Society for Cell Biology and the Journal of Cell Biology. The Keith R. Porter Endowment for Cell Biology, founded in 1981, supports an annual Keith R. Porter Lecture at the conference of American Society for Cell Biology.

Recognition[edit]

In 1970, together with Albert Claude and George E. Palade, Porter was awarded the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University. Porter's colleagues Albert Claude, Christian de Duve and George E. Palade were awarded a Nobel Prize in 1974 "for describing the structure and function of organelles in biological cells", work that Porter is also well known for. Although Porter is known by many as the "The Father of Cell Biology" he never officially won a Nobel Prize for his achievements and contributions to science.

--Plan to add in a picture of him aswell.