biology

Tim Mitchison

Tim Mitchison is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Tim Mitchison rather than just read about it. In short: Timothy John Mitchison is a cell biologist and systems biologist and Hasib Sabbagh Professor of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School in the United States. He is known for his discovery, with Marc Kirschner, of dynamic instability in microtubules, for studies of the mechanism of cell division, and for contributions to chemical biology.

Key takeaways

Tim Mitchison belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Tim Mitchison to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Tim Mitchison from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Timothy John Mitchison is a cell biologist and systems biologist and Hasib Sabbagh Professor of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School in the United States. He is known for his discovery, with Marc Kirschner, of dynamic instability in microtubules, for studies of the mechanism of cell division, and for contributions to chemical biology.

Education and early life Mitchison was educated at Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School and completed his Bachelor of Arts degree in Biochemistry at the University of Oxford where he was an undergraduate student of Merton College, Oxford, from 1976 to 1979. He moved to the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) in 1979 for his PhD which was supervised by Marc Kirschner and investigated the dynamic instability of microtubules.

Career and research Mitchison returned to the UK for postdoctoral research at the National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) in London. In 1988 he returned to San Francisco where he was appointed assistant professor at UCSF. In 1994 he wrote an opinion piece for the journal Chemistry & Biology titled "Towards a pharmacological genetics" which helped to launch the field of chemical genetics. In 1997 he moved to Harvard University to become co-director of the Institute for Chemistry and Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School, where he pioneered phenotype-based screening, discovering the small molecule monastrol – the first small-molecule inhibitor of mitosis that does not target tubulin. Monastrol was shown to inhibit kinesin-5, a motor protein. In 2003 he became Deputy Chair of the newly formed Department of Systems Biology, chaired by Marc Kirschner. He works on aspects of mesoscale biology including the self-organization of the cytoskeleton and of cytoplasm. He collaborates extensively with Christine Field on the mechanism of cytokinesis.

Awards and honors Mitchison was elected Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1997 for "substantial contributions to the improvement of natural knowledge" and served as president of the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) in 2010. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States in 2014 and delivered the Keith R. Porter Lecture in 2013.

Personal life Mitchison is married to scientist Christine M. Field with whom he has two children. Mitchison comes from a family of distinguished biologists; his father is Avrion Mitchison, his uncles are Denis Mitchison and Murdoch Mitchison, his great uncle was J.B.S. Haldane and his great-grandfather John Scott Haldane. His grandparents were the politician Dick Mitchison and the writer Naomi Mitchison (née Haldane). His younger sister Hannah M. Mitchison is also a biologist.

References

This article incorporates text available under the CC BY 4.0 license.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Tim Mitchison

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Tim Mitchison claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Tim Mitchison before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Tim Mitchison ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Tim Mitchison

In research: Tim Mitchison appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Tim Mitchison in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Tim Mitchison is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1958 births, 20th-century British biologists, 21st-century British biologists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Tim Mitchison outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Tim Mitchison in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Tim Mitchison means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Tim Mitchison out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Tim Mitchison in simple terms?

Why does Tim Mitchison matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Tim Mitchison?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Tim Mitchison.