G. Marius Clore MAE, FRSC, FMedSci, FRS is a British-born, Anglo-American molecular

biophysicist Biophysics is an interdisciplinary science that applies approaches and methods traditionally used in physics to study biological phenomena. Biophysics covers all scales of biological organization, from molecular to organismic and populations ...

and

structural biologist Structural biology deals with structural analysis of living material (formed, composed of, and/or maintained and refined by living cells) at every level of organization. Early structural biologists throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries we ...

. He was born in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

U.K. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

and is a dual U.S./U.K. Citizen. He is a

Member of the National Academy of Sciences Membership of the National Academy of Sciences is an award granted to scientists that the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) of the United States judges to have made “distinguished and continuing achievements in original research”. Membership ...

, a

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the Fellows of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...

, a

Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences Fellowship of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci) is an award for medical scientists who are judged by the UK Academy of Medical Sciences for the "excellence of their science, their contribution to medicine and society and the range of the ...

, a

Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...

, a

NIH The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in 1887 and is part of the United States Department of Health and Human Service ...

Distinguished Investigator, and the Chief of the Molecular and Structural Biophysics Section in the Laboratory of Chemical Physics of the

National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) is part of the United States National Institutes of Health, which in turn is part of the Department of Health and Human Services. NIDDK is approximately the fifth-larges ...

at the U.S.

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in 1887 and is part of the United States Department of Health and Human Service ...

. He is known for his foundational work in three-dimensional

protein Proteins are large biomolecules and macromolecules that comprise one or more long chains of amino acid residue (biochemistry), residues. Proteins perform a vast array of functions within organisms, including Enzyme catalysis, catalysing metab ...

and

nucleic acid Nucleic acids are large biomolecules that are crucial in all cells and viruses. They are composed of nucleotides, which are the monomer components: a pentose, 5-carbon sugar, a phosphate group and a nitrogenous base. The two main classes of nuclei ...

structure determination by biomolecular NMR spectroscopy, for advancing experimental approaches to the study of large

macromolecule A macromolecule is a "molecule of high relative molecular mass, the structure of which essentially comprises the multiple repetition of units derived, actually or conceptually, from molecules of low relative molecular mass." Polymers are physi ...

s and their complexes by NMR, and for developing NMR-based methods to study rare conformational states in

and protein-protein recognition. Clore's discovery of previously undetectable, functionally significant, rare transient states of macromolecules has yielded fundamental new insights into the mechanisms of important biological processes, and in particular the significance of weak interactions and the mechanisms whereby the opposing constraints of speed and specificity are optimized. Further, Clore's work opens up a new era of pharmacology and drug design as it is now possible to target structures and conformations that have been heretofore unseen.

Biography

Clore received his undergraduate degree with

first class honours The British undergraduate degree classification system is a grading structure used for undergraduate degrees or bachelor's degrees and integrated master's degrees in the United Kingdom. The system has been applied, sometimes with significant var ...

biochemistry Biochemistry, or biological chemistry, is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology, a ...

from

University College London University College London (Trade name, branded as UCL) is a Public university, public research university in London, England. It is a Member institutions of the University of London, member institution of the Federal university, federal Uni ...

in 1976 and medical degree from

UCL Medical School UCL Medical School is the medical school of University College London (UCL), a public research university in London, England. The school provides a wide range of undergraduate and postgraduate medical education programmes and also has a medical ...

in 1979. After completing

house physician Pre-registration house officer (PRHO), commonly referred to as house officer and less commonly as houseman, is a former official term for a grade of junior doctor that was, until 2005, the only job open to medical graduates in the United Kingdom ...

and house surgeon appointments at

University College Hospital University College Hospital (UCH) is a teaching hospital in the Fitzrovia area of the London Borough of Camden, England. The hospital, which was founded as the North London Hospital in 1834, is closely associated with University College Lo ...

and

St Charles' Hospital St Charles' Hospital is a health facility in North Kensington, London. It is managed by the Central London Community Healthcare NHS Trust. History The foundation stone for the hospital was laid in 1879 and it was officially opened by the Prince ...

(part of the St. Mary's Hospital group), respectively, he was a member of the scientific staff of the Medical Research Council

National Institute for Medical Research The National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR), was a medical research institute based in Mill Hill, on the outskirts of north London, England. It was funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC); In 2016, the NIMR became part of the new F ...

from 1980 to 1984. He received his

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

from the

in Physical Biochemistry in 1982. He was awarded a joint Lister Institute Research Fellowship from the

Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine The Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine, informally known as the Lister Institute, was established as a research institute (the British Institute of Preventive Medicine) in 1891, with bacteriologist Marc Armand Ruffer as its first director, ...

which he held from 1982 to 1984 at the Medical Research Council. In 1984 he joined the

Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry The Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry (; abbreviated MPIB) is a research institute of the Max Planck Society located in Martinsried, a suburb of Munich. The institute was founded in 1973 by the merger of three formerly independent institutes ...

Martinsried Martinsried is a village in the municipality of Planegg in Munich district, Bavaria, Germany. It is one of Munich's two science suburbs. Martinsried is best known as the location of the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, the Max Planck Inst ...

, Germany, where he headed the Biological NMR department from 1984 to 1988. In 1988, Clore was recruited to the

(

) Laboratory of Chemical Physics (

) located in

Bethesda, Maryland Bethesda () is an unincorporated, census-designated place in southern Montgomery County, Maryland, United States. Located just northwest of Washington, D.C., it is a major business and government center of the Washington metropolitan region ...

, U.S., where he interacted closely in the late 1980s and early 1990s with NIH colleagues

Ad Bax Adriaan "Ad" Bax (born 1956) is a Dutch-American molecular biophysicist who is a Distinguished Investigator at the National Institutes of Health. He is the Chief of the Section on Biophysical NMR Spectroscopy in the Laboratory of Chemical Physics ...

, Angela Gronenborn and

Dennis Torchia Dennis Torchia is an American biophysicist who specialized in NMR spectroscopy. He spent most of his career at the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR), part of the United States National Institutes of Health, where he ser ...

on the development of multidimensional heteronuclear

NMR Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is a physical phenomenon in which atomic nucleus, nuclei in a strong constant magnetic field are disturbed by a weak oscillating magnetic field (in the near and far field, near field) and respond by producing ...

spectroscopy and a structural biology effort aimed at proteins involved in the pathogenesis of

HIV/AIDS The HIV, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a retrovirus that attacks the immune system. Without treatment, it can lead to a spectrum of conditions including acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). It is a Preventive healthcare, pr ...

. He has remained at the NIH ever since and is currently a NIH Distinguished Investigator and Chief of the Section on Molecular and Structural Biophysics at the NIH. He is an elected Member of the

United States National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

, a

Fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...

of the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

, a

, a Fellow of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...

, and a Foreign Member of the

Academia Europaea The Academia Europaea is a pan-European Academy of humanities, letters, law, and sciences. The Academia was founded in 1988 as a functioning Europe-wide Academy that encompasses all fields of scholarly inquiry. It acts as co-ordinator of Europe ...

(Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Section). Clore's citation upon election to the

reads:

Research

3D structure determination in solution by NMR

Clore played a pivotal role in the development of three- and four-dimensional NMR spectroscopy, the use of

residual dipolar coupling The residual dipolar coupling between two spins in a molecule occurs if the molecules in solution exhibit a partial alignment leading to an incomplete averaging of spatially anisotropic dipolar couplings. Partial molecular alignment leads to an inc ...

s for structure determination, the development of simulated annealing and restrained molecular dynamics for three-dimensional protein and nucleic acid structure determination, the solution NMR structure determination of large protein complexes, the development of the combined use of NMR and small-angle X-ray scattering in solution structure determination, and the analysis and characterization of

protein dynamics In molecular biology, proteins are generally thought to adopt unique structures determined by their amino acid sequences. However, proteins are not strictly static objects, but rather populate ensembles of (sometimes similar) conformations. Tran ...

by NMR. Clore's work on complexes of all the cytoplasmic components of the bacterial phosphotransferase system (PTS) led to significant insights into how

signal transduction Signal transduction is the process by which a chemical or physical signal is transmitted through a cell as a biochemical cascade, series of molecular events. Proteins responsible for detecting stimuli are generally termed receptor (biology), rece ...

proteins recognize multiple, structurally dissimilar partners by generating similar binding surfaces from completely different structural elements and exploiting side chain conformational plasticity. Clore is also one of the main authors of the very widely used XPLOR-NIH NMR structure determination program

Detection and visualization of excited and sparsely populated states

Clore's recent work has focused on developing new NMR methods (such as paramagnetic relaxation enhancement, dark state exchange saturation transfer spectroscopy and lifetime line broadening) to detect, characterize and visualize the structure and dynamics of sparsely populated states of macromolecules, which are important in macromolecular interactions but invisible to conventional structural and biophysical techniques. Examples of include the direct demonstration of rotation-coupled sliding and intermolecular translocation as mechanisms whereby sequence-specific DNA binding proteins locate their target site(s) within an overwhelming sea of non-specific DNA sequences; the detection, visualization and characterization of encounter complexes in protein-protein association; the analysis of the synergistic effects of conformational selection and induced fit in protein-ligand interactions; and the uncovering of "dark", spectroscopically invisible states in interactions of NMR-visible proteins and polypeptides (including intrinsically disordered states) with very large megadalton macromolecular assemblies. The latter includes an atomic-resolution view of the dynamics of the

amyloid Amyloids are aggregates of proteins characterised by a fibrillar morphology of typically 7–13 nm in diameter, a β-sheet secondary structure (known as cross-β) and ability to be stained by particular dyes, such as Congo red. In the human ...

-β aggregation process. and the demonstration of intrinsic unfoldase/foldase activity of the macromolecular machine GroEL. These various techniques have also been used to uncover the kinetic pathway of pre-nucleation transient oligomerization events and associated structures involving the protein encoded by huntingtin exon-1, which may provide a potential avenue for therapeutic intervention in Huntington's disease, a fatal autosomal dominant, neurodegenerative condition.

Scientific impact

Clore is one of the most highly cited scientists in the fields of molecular biophysics, structural biology, biomolecular NMR and chemistry with over 550 published scientific articles and an h-index (number of papers cited h or more time) of 144. Clore is also one of only five

scientists to have been elected to both the

and

The Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, r ...

, the other four being

Julius Axelrod Julius Axelrod (May 30, 1912 – December 29, 2004) was an American biochemist. He won a share of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1970 along with Bernard Katz and Ulf von Euler. The Nobel Committee honored him for his work on the ...

Francis Collins Francis Sellers Collins (born April 14, 1950) is an American physician-scientist who discovered the genes associated with a number of diseases and led the Human Genome Project. He served as director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) ...

Harold Varmus Harold Eliot Varmus (born December 18, 1939) is an American Nobel Prize-winning scientist. He is currently the Lewis Thomas University Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and a senior associate at the New York Genome Center. He was ...

and

Personal life

Marius Clore was educated at the Lycee Francais Charles de Gaulle in Kensington, London,

and

. He holds a 3rd degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do and was an avid cave diver. Marius Clore's father was the film producer Leon Clore whose credits include

The French Lieutenant's Woman ''The French Lieutenant's Woman'' is a 1969 Postmodern literature, postmodern historical fiction novel by John Fowles. The plot explores the fraught relationship of gentleman and amateur naturalist Charles Smithson and Sarah Woodruff, the for ...

Awards and honors

*2024: Elected Fellow of the UK

Academy of Medical Sciences The Academy of Medical Sciences is an organisation established in the UK in 1998. It is one of the four UK National Academy, National Academies, the others being the British Academy, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society. Its ...

*2021:

Murray Goodman Memorial Prize An award recognizing outstanding accomplishments in one or more of the areas of biochemistry, biophysical chemistry, biophysics, or chemical biology. The award is given by the journal ''Biopolymers'', and is named for the journal’s founding edi ...

*2021: Honorary Doctorate of Science (DSc) from

*2021:

Royal Society of Chemistry The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) is a learned society and professional association in the United Kingdom with the goal of "advancing the chemistry, chemical sciences". It was formed in 1980 from the amalgamation of the Chemical Society, the ...

Khorana Prize *2020: Elected Fellow of the

*2020:

Biophysical Society The Biophysical Society is an international scientific society whose purpose is to lead the development and dissemination of knowledge in biophysics. Founded in 1958, the Society currently consists of over 7,000 members in academia, government, an ...

Innovation Award *2015: Elected Foreign Member of the

. *2014: Elected Member of the

( Biophysics and Computational Biology section) *2012:

Biochemical Society The Biochemical Society is a learned society in the United Kingdom in the field of biochemistry, including all the cellular and molecular biosciences. It was founded in 1911 and acquired the existing '' Biochemical Journal'' the following year. T ...

2013 Centenary Award (previously known as the Jubilee Medal) and Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins Memorial Lecture (U.K.) *2011:

Centenary Prize *2011: Elected Fellow of the International Society of Magnetic Resonance *2011: Elected

Distinguished Investigator *2010: Elected Fellow of the

*2010: Hillebrand Award of the Washington Chemical Society *2009: Elected Fellow of the

*2003: Elected Member of the

(U.K.) *2001: Original member,

Institute for Scientific Information The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) was an academic publishing service, founded by Eugene Garfield in Philadelphia in 1956. ISI offered scientometric and bibliographic database services. Its specialty was citation indexing and analysis, ...

(ISI) Highly Cited Researchers Database (in Biology & Biochemistry and Chemistry sections). *1999: Elected Fellow of the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is a United States–based international nonprofit with the stated mission of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsib ...

. *1993: Dupont-Merck Young Investigator Award of the

Protein Society The Protein Society is an international, not-for-profit, scholarly society with the mission to provide forums for the advancement of research into protein structure, function, design and applications. History The Protein Society was founded in ...

*1990: Elected

Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry Fellowship of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) is one of the most prestigious awards conferred by the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) in the United Kingdom. Existing Fellows include award winning scientists and Nobel prize winners. FRSC awa ...

( FRSC) (U.K).

References

External links

G. Marius Clore personal homepageOral history interview transcript with Marius Clore on 23 March 2020, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives
* ttps://royalsociety.org/people/G-Marius-Clore-25341/ Listing on the Royal Society web sitebr>Listing on the Academy of Medical Sciences (United Kingdom) web site/ Listing on the American Academy of Arts and Sciences web siteListing on the Academia Europaea web site Listing on NIDDK/NIH web siteListing on NIH Intramural Research Program web site
*
G. Marius Clore Orcid IDMarius Clore on Landmark Article in the Journal of Magnetic ResonanceMarius Clore Lecture on "Transient Prenucleation Oligomerization of Huntingtin" at the ICMRBS Webinar on Emerging Topics in Biomolecular Resonance (4/15/2021)List of University College London Honorary Graduates
{{DEFAULTSORT:Clore, G. Marius Fellows of the Royal Society Fellows of the Academy of Medical Sciences (United Kingdom) Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Members of Academia Europaea Fellows of the Royal Society of Chemistry Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science American scientists English scientists American biophysicists English biophysicists American biochemists English biochemists 20th-century English medical doctors 21st-century English medical doctors 21st-century biochemists Computational chemists Nuclear magnetic resonance National Institutes of Health people National Institutes of Health faculty Alumni of University College London Alumni of the UCL Medical School Alumni of the University of London Living people English emigrants to the United States Year of birth missing (living people)