Interview with Dr. Tom Pollard and Dr. Bill Earnshaw

Why did you feel that it was important to write a new edition of Cell Biology, 4th Edition? 

Tom Pollard: Starting in the 1950s, the field of cell biology has been and continues to grow rapidly.  Our understanding of many cellular processes improves each year. Dramatic new insights are available and incorporated into the book since the publication of the third edition. 

Bill Earnshaw: This book has been a labor of love for over 30 years. A new edition like this one takes 3-4 years to put together. This time, our initial plan was to do a slight update of the book. But in the end, we decided to do a major revision – reorganizing the text, redesigning many of the figures and writing two completely new chapters. Cell Biology is always moving forward and amazing new discoveries are constantly changing the way we think about cellular functions and their impact on human health. Tom, Jennifer, Graham and I are all working at the cutting edge of contemporary science, so we know about those developments, often before they are published. We decided that there had been enough new developments to merit a new edition. Writing a new edition of a book is such a huge undertaking, that you cannot really know in advance what the final product will look like. We are genuinely excited about the way this edition has turned out.  

What is the most exciting aspect of your new publication? What chapter or topic covered in the new edition are you most excited about?  

Tom Pollard: The book includes more than 30 new atomic resolution structures of vital cellular components.  These explain or clarify how cells work at the molecular level. 

Bill Earnshaw: This is a bit of a silly question. Every chapter of the book has insights that no one could have predicted when we started working on this project over 30 years ago. One chapter that I think is particularly useful is chapter 7, where the structure of genomes is described. This is an area where students will really struggle to find useful review articles. We live in the age when everyone who wants to can have their genome sequenced – though understanding how to interpret and use the resulting information is a thorny problem that is yet to be solved in a way that will make the most powerful impact on the quality of our lives. Reading Chapter 7 and gaining some understanding of general principles underlying the organization of genomes will be a big aid in interpreting these genome sequences. 

Who will find the greatest value from Cell Biology, 4th Edition and why?  

Bill Earnshaw: This book is written to make the modern world of modern molecular cell biology accessible to upper-level undergraduates and medical students, but given our positions as highly active researchers, there is enough surprising new material in there that we believe that even graduate students and their supervisors will find useful explanations of subjects that they may want to explore. 

Tom Pollard: Any student, professor, or researcher interested in the molecular basis of life will appreciate the award-winning illustrations and up-to-date, concise explanations in the text. 

What new ideas, practices, or procedures do you hope your readers take away from Cell Biology, 4th Edition? 

Bill Earnshaw: One aspect of our book that we are proud of is our visualization of molecular structures and the introduction that we provide to how scientific pathways are organized and coordinated. We hope that our readers will take away an integrated view of cellular behavior that will enable them to visualize even complex processes clearly. We have also taken care to provide extensive information about how perturbations of integrated pathways caused by mutations of their components cause disease. We hope that some of our readers will be inspired to investigate these diseases and ultimately make discoveries that will improve human health. 

Tom Pollard: I hope that readers will be enriched with an understanding of how macromolecular interactions between proteins, nucleic acids and lipids have maintained life processes over 3 billion years of evolution. 

What problem do you hope the future generation of your biologists will be able to solve?  

Tom Pollard: Explaining the molecular basis of every disease to empower future efforts to predict, prevent and treat disease. 

Bill Earnshaw: I hope that the work of a future generation of molecular cell biologists will yield insights that were inspired, at least in part, by reading our book (as well as insights yet to be discovered). It would be really incredible if those insights led them to develop strategies for managing and ultimately curing cancer – one of the most terrifying threats to all of us, particularly as we grow older. I will also be extremely excited to see when the thorny technical problems are finally solved and we are able to say in detail how chromosomes get packaged to form mitotic chromosomes. 

Is there anything else about the book you’d like to say? 

Bill Earnshaw: We hope that students will not read the book solely with an eye towards what will be on the exam, and that they will fall in love with Graham’s amazing art work. Graham is one of the world’s top molecular illustrators. As both Art Director and Artist, the look of the book is shaped by Graham’s vision. Just as Tom, Jennifer and I are constantly making breakthroughs in our approaches to answering our research questions, Graham is also making breakthroughs in how he presents molecules. The readers can see this for themselves, and if they are lucky to get one of our decks of cards (also available on Amazon) they will be able to enjoy 14 of Graham’s “greatest hits” from this edition. 

In addition to the new edition textbook, there are also beautiful playing cards that you mention –  featuring Graham Johnson’s Cell Biology artwork! Tell us about Cell Biology Playing Cards, 1st Edition. 

Tom Pollard: Graham is one of the world’s top molecular illustrators – a real rock star of molecular visualisation. To spread the word about our book and allow people to also relax and have fun, we have designed a new deck of cards featuring 14 of Graham’s “greatest hits” from this edition. Molecules and cells are not only dry subjects studied by people in white coats. They are also often amazing and beautiful. Our deck of cards is intended to share some of the beauty. 

Bill Earnshaw: Reviewing Graham’s new illustrations was a pleasure but narrowing them down to 15 for the playing cards was painful.  

About the Authors

Tom Pollard: I am an MD who morphed into a biophysically-based cell biologist to study the molecular mechanisms of cell movements and cytokinesis. After 50 years as a faculty member at Harvard Medical School, Johns Hopkins Medical School, Salk Institute, and Yale University, I retired and am now a Visiting Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. 

My research has been recognized by election to the US National Academy of Science, National Academy of Medicine, American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Associate Member of the European Molecular Biology Organization, as well as the receipt of the E.B. Wilson Medal of the American Society for Cell Biology and the Gairdner International Award. I served as President of both the American Society for Cell Biology and the Biophysical Society. Our children, Katie and Dan are both computational biologists. Katie was recently elected to the National Academy of Medicine.  

Bill Earnshaw: My name is Bill Earnshaw. I am a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow and Professor of Chromosome Dynamics at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. I have lived in Scotland since 1996 and have dual US and UK citizenship.  I have worked my whole scientific career on DNA packaging – how the enormously long genome is folded up into chromosomes that can be accurately separated when cells divide. The structure of mitotic chromosomes has been widely studied since they were first described in 1882, and yet we still do not know how the DNA is organized. In my research career, I have discovered a number of key chromosome proteins, including the first centromere proteins that direct chromosome segregation in mitosis and the chromosomal passenger complex – which regulates a wide range of events throughout mitosis. In recognition of my accomplishments, I have been elected to EMBO, The Royal Society of Edinburgh, The Academy of Medical Sciences, and the Royal Society of London. I am married to a scientist, Professor Margarete Heck, and have two children, Charles and Irina, both of whom are doctors and budding medical researchers. 

Purchase your copy of Cell Biology, 4th Edition, and Cell Biology Playing Cards, 1st Edition here!