John Hughes (neuroscientist) facts for kids

John Hughes, born on January 6, 1942, is a British scientist who studies the brain. He is famous for helping discover special molecules called enkephalins. This discovery showed how certain medicines, like opiates, work in our brains. They act like natural chemicals already inside us, called ... peptides. In 1978, he won a big award, the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research, for this important work.

Early Life and Education

John Hughes grew up in South London, England. He went to King's College London for his university studies. There, he earned his first degree (BSc) and then a higher degree called a PhD. A PhD means he became an expert in his field through advanced research.

Career and Brain Research

After finishing his PhD, John Hughes moved to the United States. He did more research at Yale School of Medicine. There, he studied how a substance called angiotensin affects the heart.

Later, he became a teacher of Pharmacology at Aberdeen University in Scotland. He had his own laboratory there. He also worked closely with another scientist named Hans Kosterlitz.

Hughes then became a professor at Imperial College London. After that, he led a neuroscience center at the University of Cambridge. Today, he is an Emeritus Fellow at Wolfson College in Cambridge. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society, which is a very high honor for scientists.

Discovering Enkephalins

While working with Hans Kosterlitz at Aberdeen University, John Hughes helped make a huge discovery. They found molecules called enkephalins. Kosterlitz had developed ways to test how opiate medicines affected tiny pieces of animal tissue. Hughes wanted to see if chemicals found naturally in brains could act like these medicines.

Hughes would ride his bicycle to a slaughterhouse every day. He traded bottles of whiskey for pig heads from the butchers. He then used these pig brains to make special liquid extracts. He tested many of these samples using Kosterlitz's methods.

Finally, the two scientists were able to find and identify two specific peptides. They named them met-enkephalin and leu-enkephalin. These were natural molecules from the brain that acted like opioids. Hughes and Kosterlitz first shared their findings at a science meeting in May 1974. They published the details of these molecules in 1975.

In 1978, they shared the Lasker award with Solomon H. Snyder. .....