Tom Blundell#

Published Work: ~476 Publications, ~30 in Nature, Science etc.

List of publications

Key contributions

First structure of a globular polypeptide hormone and hypotheses re receptor binding and evolution:

1. Blundell TL, Cutfield JF, Cutfield SM, Dodson GG, Dodson EJ, Hodgkin DC, Mercola D, Vijayan M (1971)Atomic positions in 2-Zinc insulin crystals Nature 231, 506-511.

2. Pullen RA, Lindsay DG, Tickle IJ, Wood SP, Brandenburg D, Zahn H, Gliemann J, Gammeltoft S and Blundell TL (1976) On the receptor binding region of insulin Nature 259, 369-373.

3. Blundell TL and Wood SP (1975) Is the evolution of insulin Darwinian or due to selectively neutral mutation? Nature 257, 197-203.

4. Blundell TL and Humbel RE (1980) Hormone families: pancreatic hormones and homologous growth factors. Nature 287, 781-787.

First structure of flexible peptide and discussion of flexibility in receptor binding

5. Sasaki K, Dockerill S, Adamiak DA, Tickle IJ and Blundell TL (1975) X-ray analysis of glucagon and its relationship to receptor binding Nature 257, 751-757.

6. Wood SP, Tickle IJ, Treharne AC, Pitts JE, Mascarenhas Y, Li J-Y, Husain J, Cooper J, Hruby VJ, Wyssbrod HR, Buku A, Fischmann AJ and Blundell TL (1986) Crystal structure analysis of deamino-oxytocin: conformational flexibility and receptor binding. Science 232, 633-636

Structural biology of growth factors and receptor interactions: NGF, HGF and FGF

7. McDonald N, Lapatto R, Murray-Rust J, Gunning J, Wlodawer A and Blundell TL (1991) New Protein fold revealed by a 2.3Å resolution crystal structure of nerve growth factor. Nature 345: 411-414 (First structure of a nerve growth factor)

8. Pellegrini L., Burke D.F., von Delft F., Mulloy B., Blundell TL (2000) Crystal Structure of fibroblast growth factor receptor ectodomain bound to ligand and heparin. Nature 407, 1029-1034

9. Chirgadze, D.Y., Hepple, J.P., Zhou, H., Byrd, R.A., Blundell, T.L. & Gherardi, E. (1999). Crystal structure of the NK1 fragment of HGF/SF suggests a novel mode for growth factor dimerization and receptor binding . Nature Structural Biology 6, 72-79. (First structure of HGF)

Structure of proteins involved in cell cycle and signal transduction.

10. Brotherton, DH., Dhanaraj, V., Wick, S., Brizuela, L., Domaille, PJ., Voyanik, E., Xu, X., Parisini, E., Smith, OB., Archer, SJ., Serrano, M., Brenner, SL., Blundell, TL. and Laue, ED. (1998) Crystal structure of the complex of the cyclin D-dependent kinase Cdk6 bound to the cell cycle inhibitor p19INK4d. Nature 395, 244-250

11. Timm D, Kamran S, Gout I, Guruprasad L, Waterfield M & Blundell TL (1994) Crystal Structure of the pleckstrin homology domain from dynamin. Natural Structural Biology 1:782-788

In sights into DNA Repair: homologous recombination and non-homologous end joining:

12. Pellegrini L, Yu DS, Lo T, Anand S, Lee M, Blundell TL, Venkitaraman AR (2002) Insights into DNA recombination from the structure of a RAD51-BRCA2 complex. Nature 420, 287-293

13. Sibanda BL, Critchlow S, Begun J, Pei XY, Jackson SP, Blundell TL, Pellegrini L (2001) Insight into the mechanism of DNA end joining from the structure of an Xrcc4 dimer in complex with DNA ligase IV. Nature Structural Biology 8, 1015-1019

14. Sibanda BL, Chirgadze D, Blundell TL (2010) Crystal Structure of DNA-PKcs Reveals a Large Open-Ring Cradle Comprised of HEAT Repeats. Nature 7;463(7277):118-21

Structural biology of the vertebrate lens: origins of transparency and cataract.

15. Blundell TL, Lindley P, Miller L, Moss DS, Slingsby C, Tickle IJ, Turnell WG and Wistow G (1981) The molecular structure and stability of the eye lens: X-ray analysis of gamma-crystallin II Nature 289, 771-777.

16. Slingsby C, Inana G, Piatigorsky J, Norman B and Blundell TL (1984) Gene and protein structure of a B-crystallin polypeptide in murine lens: relationship of exons and structural motifs. Nature 302, 310-315.

17. Bax B, Lapatto R, Nalini V, Driessen H, Lindley P, Mahdevan D, Blundell TL and Slingsby C (1990) X-ray analysis of bB2-crystallin and evolution of oligomeric lens proteins. Nature: 347, 776-780

Renin and HIV proteinase: early ideas influencing structure-based drug discovery

18. Tang J, James MNG, Hsu IN, Jenkins JA and Blundell TL (1978) Structural evidence for gene duplication in the evolution of acid proteinases Nature 271, 618-621. (The dimeric ancestry of aspartic proteinases, subsequently shown to be model for retroviral proteinases)

19. Sibanda BL, Pearl L and Blundell TL (1983) Three-dimensional structure, specificity and catalytic mechanism of renin. Nature 304, 273-275.

20. Lapatto R, Blundell TL, Hemmings A, Overington J, Wilderspin A, Wood S, Merson JR, Whittle PJ, Danley DE, Geoghegan KF, Hawrylik SJ, Lee SE, Scheld K G, Hobart PM and Blundell TL (1989) X-ray analysis of HIV-1 proteinase at 2.7A resolution confirms structural homology among re-troviral enzymes Nature 342, 299-302

21. Foundling SI, Cooper J, Watson FE, Cleasby A, Pearl LH, Sibanda BL, Hemmings A, Wood S P, Valler MJ, Norey CG, Kay J, Boger J, Dunn BM, Leckie BJ, Jones DM, Atrash N, Hallett A , Szelke M and Blundell TL (1987) High resolution X-ray analyses of renin inhibitor-aspartic proteinase complexes Nature, 327, 349-352 (Multiple protein ligand complex structures and drug discovery)

22. Dhanaraj V, Dealwis C, Frazao C, Badasso M, Sibanda BL, Tickle IJ, Cooper JB, Driessen HPC, Newman M, Aguilar C, Wood SP, Blundell TL, Hobart PM, Geoghegan K, Ammirati MJ, Danley DE, O'Connor BA and Hoover DJ. (1992) X-ray analyses of peptide inhibitor complexes define the structural basis of specificity for human and mouse renins. Nature 357:466-472

Design, modelling and drug discovery

23. Sibanda BL, Sternberg MJE, Thornton JM and Blundell TL (1987) Knowledge-based prediction of protein structures and the design of novel molecules Nature, 326, 347-352 (first discussion of knowledge-based approaches)

24. Sali A & Blundell TL. (1993) Comparative modelling by satisfaction of spatial restraints. J. Mol. Biol. 234: 779-815 (Most widely used comparative modelling program)

25. Shi J, Blundell TL, and Mizuguchi K (2001) FUGUE: Sequence-structure Homology Recognition Using Environment-specific Substitution Tables and Structure-dependent Gap Penalties. J. Mol. Biol. 310, 243-257.

26. Blundell, T.L., Jhoti, H. and Abell, C. (2002). High-Throughput crystallography for lead discovery in drug design. Nature Reviews Drug Discovery. 1, 45-54.

27. Congreve M, Murray CW and Blundell TL (2005) Structural Biology and Drug Discovery. Drug Discovery Today 10, 895-907

28. Blundell TL (1996). Structure-based drug design. 1996 Nature. 384S: 23-26

Contributions to X-ray crystallography

29. Blundell TL and Johnson LN (1977) Protein Crystallography. Academic Press (first text on PX; first careful analysis of heavy atom binding)

30. DePristo MA, De Bakker PI, Blundell TL (2004) Heterogeneity and inaccuracy in protein structures solved by x-ray crystallography. Structure (Camb) 12, 831-8