In Memory of Reginald John Ellis

Moving to Warwick Biological Sciences in 1982, Mike Lord and I joined the Plant Biochemistry Group that John was head of at the time. Over the many years since, until his retirement, John was a constant source of encouragement and remarkable insight. He was always to be relied upon for constructive and helpful advice. His many prestigious prizes and awards speak for themselves to his foresight in appreciating the essential role in developing the molecular chaperone concept.

It was an absolute privilege to have worked with John. With his humour and insight, John's advice was always well taken. We shared modules and so many student discussions - a chaperone to guide the students in scientific method indeed. I'll keep sharing the book and the stories that bring science to all.

As a person who met John many times in the department I can attest to how wonderful and extremely modest he was, given his superb accomplishments as one of the fathers of plant biochemistry. John was also running a highly sought after Research Ethics module in our department and was known for how incisive and eternally inquisitive his questioning was.

John’s accomplishments are further outlined here https://www.nature.com/articles/nrm3665
in a text written by Hartl – wo followed in John’s footsteps and got the Lasker Award for working out the full sequence of steps leading to Rubisco doing its job of carbon fixation: a molecule without which no animal could exist.
https://laskerfoundation.org/winners/chaperone-assisted-protein-folding/

As the Royal Society citation acknowledged, John discovered the GroEL family of chaperonins which was a breakthrough in Science, found in every protein biochemistry textbook. This opened the path for understanding chloroplast genetics and function and had much deeper inpact across all biological systems. GroEL’s animal homolog, called Hsp60 is one of the key potentiators of evolutionary change (called modulator ‘evolvability’) as found by Rutherford
https://www.nature.com/articles/24550
https://www.nature.com/articles/nrg1041

John had also organized a wonderful series of departmental lectures on Evolution, managing to invite international guests such as Walter Gehring, the discover of Pax 6, from Switzerland – and others came to Warwick simply because they knew John.

He was a giant of Science and will be sadly missed by those of us who had the privilege to meet him in person.
Professor Georgy Koentges
[email protected]