Charles Daniel Lane

Charles Daniel Lane is a British molecular biologist who along with colleagues Gerard Marbaix and John Gurdon discovered the oocyte exogenous mRNA expression system – a system that not only reveals aspects of the control of gene expression but also provides a "living test tube" for the study of macromolecules: such a whole cell system also shows the merits of a non-reductionist approach, and the possibility of mRNA therapeutics. Early life and education Lane is the son of biologist and nature conservationist Miriam Rothschild and British Army officer George Lane. As a boy, Charles displayed a passion for moths, butterflies and plants, and with the aid of his mother wrote a number of "anecdotal" papers on subjects such as the migration of butterflies. Charles was also a significant collector of Meadow Brown butterflies for the population genetic studies of E.B. Ford. Leaving school at 16, Lane joined the biochemistry laboratory of Hans Krebs: much of Lane's work involved studying pyruvate kinase in slices and in homogenates of rat liver. Lane attended Trinity College, Cambridge and Christ Church, Oxford. His University of Oxford doctoral thesis was "The Microinjection of RNA into Eggs and Oocytes of Xenopus Laevis". A hard copy of the thesis can be viewed at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. He then worked at the Medical Research Council Molecular Biology Laboratories at Cambridge and then at the National Institute for Medical Research, at Mill Hill London.