George Lomonossoff wins the 2015 Unilever Colworth Prize
01 April 2015
Today at the Annual Conference, Professor George Lomonossoff from the John Innes Centre will be awarded the 2015 Unilever Colworth Prize, recognising his contribution to translational microbiology.
George was co-awarded the BBSRC’s ‘Innovator of the Year’ prize in 2012, after developing the plant-based CPMV-HT protein expression system.
When do you think you were first aware of science?
It was in my family: both my father and grandfather were engineers, so there were lots of scientific books around when I was growing up. When I was about 10 I took great interest in astronomy and had a telescope; I remember also getting a microscope for Christmas one year so I was really able to look at both ends of the size spectrum! When I was at school, I opted for biology because I really didn’t like the maths involved with astronomy, which I found rather dry.
When did you first consider a career in research?
To be honest, before I even went to university I knew that I wanted to do research. By the time of my A-Levels I knew that I wanted to do a PhD.
Why did you choose virology?
At the time you could get detailed information about viruses and their structure; these were the days before modern genetic sequencing, so by going for a small organism you could understand its genetic and physical structure – something you simply couldn’t do with whole cell genomes. My PhD thesis was on the self-assembly of Tobacco Mosaic Virus (TMV), which can form in the test tube from its constituent protein and nucleic acids.
What was virology like at the time? What strikes you as most different to now?
The most different thing is that I worked in the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology, but I worked on a plant virus! As viruses have such simple structures they were used as exemplars of other systems. The MRC funded work on TMV because it’s easy to get enough virus material to research on – all you need to do is rub a leaf with the virus and you get loads of virus back. This made it easier to study protein-nucleic acid interactions, which you couldn’t do at the time with other systems. Also, plant viruses are stable organisms that can’t infect humans, which let researchers use them to understand basic molecular processes, like the mechanisms of translation, without having to worry too much about containment issues.
What’s surprised you about your research?
The fact that working on plant viruses leads to useful products! I started working in a medical institute and the research I’ve done has ultimately led to medical products, although it’s taken a while. When I started I never thought my work would have a practical use.
In 2012 you were jointly awarded BBRSC’s Innovator of the Year award. Tell us about that.
That was based on some work I did with Frank Sainsbury, who was then a PhD student, and we were awarded it jointly. He was looking at how we could use Cowpea Mosaic Virus (CPMV) to express high levels of protein in a plant. Frank – originally by chance – developed a method, known as the CPMV-HT system, which allows extremely high expression of a foreign protein, using CPMV. The virus is used to introduce genes into the plant, but it can’t replicate, so there are no biocontainment issues.
What sort of things can the system be used to produce?
It can be used to make virus-like particles, for example. These are the protein shells of a virus, which lack any genetic material. The important thing is that they look like a real virus, and as such raise an immune response – they’re superb vaccines candidates. We’ve done a lot of work on animal vaccines and have licensed the technology to a company who are developing an influenza vaccine.
The system is being used for all sorts of other things as well. Researchers are using it to overexpress plant proteins within plants to see their effects and to produce specifically designed, new-to-nature compounds with novel functions. It’s been sent around the world to allow researchers to do things they wouldn’t be able to do otherwise.
What does winning this award mean to you?
There’s nothing better than being recognised by your peers. There are times as scientists that we tend to doubt whether what we do is important, so getting recognition of my work – and the work of my group – is very important. I’m representing a lot of people who have done a lot of work over the years.
His prize lecture, 'Turning diseases to commodity: working on a plant virus for fun and profit', will be held at 17.35 today.
Image: Professor George Lomonossoff.
