Keith Burridge

Keith Burridge (born 1 July 1950) is a British-born researcher and Kenan distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research on focal adhesions includes the discovery of many adhesion proteins including vinculin, talin  and paxillin, and ranks him in top 1% of the most cited scientist in the field of molecular biology and genetics. Dr. Burridge has published more than 170 peer reviewed articles.

Early life and education
He was born in 1950 in Dorset, England. He obtained his undergraduate degree in 1971 from the University of Cambridge, and then completed his Ph.D. in Dennis Bray’s laboratory in the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB), also in Cambridge, in 1975. Using biochemical techniques, he showed that at least two distinct types of myosin II exist in non-muscle cells and that some cells expressed both types.

Focal adhesion research
He went as a postdoc to James D. Watson’s laboratory at Cold Spring Harbor where he met Elias Lazarides. They decided to compile their work on α-actinin and showed that α-actinin is distributed periodically along stress fibers. They also noted that there was a concentration of α-actinin in plaques at the ends of stress fibers. Since these regions would several years later be named focal adhesions, α-actinin was the first protein found to be concentrated at these sites. While developing a procedure to purify α-actinin from smooth muscle, Burridge co-purified another protein, vinculin, independently of Benny Geiger’s discovery.

In 1981 Burridge left Cold Spring Harbor Lab for a faculty position at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he continued to work on focal adhesions. He discovered talin (protein) as another focal adhesion protein and then, in collaboration with Rick Horwitz’s laboratory, showed that talin (protein) bound to the cytoplasmic domains of integrins. He then discovered other focal adhesion components including paxillin and contributed to the discovery of zyxin and palladin. Since then his work has focused on the signaling pathways emanating from focal adhesions, including RhoA-mediated contractility  and tyrosine phosphorylation in response to adhesion.

Distinction and awards

 * 1988 Hettleman Prize.
 * 2002 Freshman Medical Student Teaching Award, UNC School of Medicine.
 * 2003 Kenan Distinguished Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology.
 * 2003 Hyman Battle Medical Student Teaching Award.