Bob Jack

I studied biochemistry in Edinburgh before moving to the LMB in Cambridge for my Ph.D. which involved protein sequencing. At the end of my three years I knew I never wanted to sequence another protein ever again. However, when applying for Post.Doc. positions in all sorts of interesting labs, everyone seemed to have a protein at the back of their freezer which needed to be sequenced. In desperation I asked Cesar Milstein if he didn’t know someone who either lacked a freezer or at least was unlikely to have a protein hidden in it. He suggested I try Klaus Rajewsky in Cologne. Klaus had freezers but, thank God, no interest in sequencing any proteins. The stay in Cologne was my introduction to immunology and to developmental biology, which I followed up by moving to Walter Gehring’s group in the Biozentrum in Basel. For many years Drosophila genetics, in particular gene control by sequence specific DNA binding proteins was in the center of my interest.
However, I returned to immunology when I moved to Greifswald. There – with lots of help from the Rajewsky lab – I established the generation of knock out mice and applied this technique to the analysis of macrophage activation. We generated the LBP deficient mouse to study macrophage interaction with LPS and the IL10R1alpha knock out to study the activation of peritoneal macrophages. I retired four years ago but remain fascinated by the subtlety and complexity of the immune system.