Legacy after Skou
The beginning of a tradition
With Jens Christian Skou’s research, Aarhus University became the place where ion transport in cells was given its molecular explanation.
Although Skou was not awarded the Nobel Prize until 40 years after his description of the sodium-potassium pump, his research results rapidly led to international attention, and they were the starting point for extensive scientific work at Aarhus University.
 | There was intense activity both at the biomedical departments and at the Aarhus University Hospital clinic. So much, in fact, that approximately 15% of the researchers at the Faculty of Health Sciences are estimated to have been involved in ATPase research in the mid-1980s. More than 600 articles on different aspects of the structure and function of Na,K-ATPase have emanated from Aarhus University since 1965 – published by both current and retired researchers. Jens Christian Skou and a number of colleagues set up the Biomembrane Centre, as part of the biotechnology research programme in the mid-80s, and this established a large Danish forum for research into transport across cell membranes. Anchoring this at the Faculty of Health Sciences continued right up to 2006, after which the PUMPKIN basic research centre was opened, and this is where studies of the structure and function of ion pumps continue. In 1973, the first international conference on Na,K-ATPase was held in New York. Professor Skou took the initiative to hold the following congress at the Sandbjerg Estate in 1978 and subsequently at the Fuglsø Centre in 1987. A number of current ATPase researchers organised the 12th conference in this series in Aarhus in 2008, with Skou as honorary chairman. This image shows the three-dimensional atomic structure of the sodium-potassium pump. Researchers attached to the Danish National Research Foundation’s PUMPKIN centre have revealed what the ion pumps in the cells look like and how they work. Read more about the discovery. |
Research into ion pumps at Aarhus University today
Research into the structure and function of ion pumps is currently carried out by the following senior researchers at Aarhus University:
Department of Anatomy
- Professor Emeritus Arvid B. Maunsbach
- Associate Professor Kaarina Pihakaski-Maunsbach, fil.dr.
Danish National Research Foundation’s PUMPKIN
- Professor Poul Nissen, PhD
Department of Physiology and Biophysics
- Professor Jens Peter Andersen, DrMedSc, MD
- Professor Torben Clausen, DrMedSc
- Associate Professor Flemming Cornelius, dr.scient. , PhD, MSc
- Professor Mikael Esmann, dr.scient. , DrMedSc, MSc in Chemistry
- Associate Professor Natalya U. Fedosova, PhD
- Professor Jesper Vuust Møller, DrMedSc
- Postdoctoral Scholar Mads Schak Toustrup-Jensen , MSc, PhD
- Professor Bente Vilsen, DrMedSc, MSc
- Associate professor Yasser Ahmed Mahmmoud, M.Sc., Ph.D.
