Michael Harvey Hastings

Michael Harvey Hastings FMedSci FRS is a British neuroscientist who works at the Medical Research Council MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) in Cambridge, UK. Hastings is known for his contributions to the current understanding of biological clocks in mammals and marine invertebrates.[1]

Michael Harvey Hastings

FMedSci FRS
NationalityBritish
Alma mater
Scientific career
Fields
  • Invertebrate marine biology (tidal and lunar rhythms)
  • Seasonal neuroendocrinology (melatonin and pineal gland)
  • Neurochemistry of mammalian circadian behaviour.
  • Molecular neurobiology of mammalian circadian clocks.
Institutions
ThesisAspects of the ecology of sandy shore crustacea
Doctoral advisorErnest Naylor
Websitewww2.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/group-leaders/h-to-m/michael-hastings/

Background

Hastings was admitted to the University of Liverpool to study marine biology (1974) and his PhD was spent at the University’s Port Erin Marine Biological Station on the Isle of Man (1977–80). With a view to becoming a science teacher, he took a Post-graduate Certificate of Education (Technical) at the Victoria University of Manchester, but then elected to pursue a career in biological research. He is married to neuroscientist Angela Charlotte Roberts (University of Cambridge).

Career and research

Hastings’ PhD work introduced him to biological clocks, in the context of tidal and semi-lunar rhythms in the marine isopod crustacean Eurydice pulchra (Leach).[2] With a post-doctoral position in Cambridge (Department of Anatomy, supervisor Joe Herbert) he moved into seasonal time-keeping in mammals with a focus on the role of the pineal gland and its hormone melatonin in photoperiodic regulation of reproduction and metabolism. In 1984 he was appointed to a junior lectureship, receiving tenure in 1988 and a readership in neuroscience in 1998. In this time he developed a research programme into the cellular actions of melatonin in the brain, and the neurochemistry of the central circadian clock, the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) of the hypothalamus. In 2001 he moved to the Division of Neurobiology at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (Cambridge) as a Group Leader to develop molecular genetic approaches to understanding the SCN molecular clockwork. His recent work[3] has focussed on the genetic basis of cellular circadian time-keeping in mammals, the role of intercellular signalling in synchronising and stabilising the neural circuitry of the SCN, and the role of circadian mechanisms in normal metabolic regulation and its dysregulation in neurodegenerative disease. In October 2013 Hastings joined Michel Goedert as joint head of the Division of Neurobiology, and since May 2015 has been sole Head of Division.

Awards and honours

References
  1. "The Royal Society, Biography - Michael Hastings".
  2. Zhang, Lin; Hastings, Michael H.; Green, Edward W.; Tauber, Eran; Sladek, Martin; Webster, Simon G.; Kyriacou, Charalambos P.; Wilcockson, David C. (2013-10-07). "Dissociation of circadian and circatidal timekeeping in the marine crustacean Eurydice pulchra". Current Biology. 23 (19): 1863–1873. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2013.08.038. ISSN 1879-0445. PMC 3793863. PMID 24076244.
  3. Hastings, Michael H.; Maywood, Elizabeth S.; Brancaccio, Marco (August 2018). "Generation of circadian rhythms in the suprachiasmatic nucleus". Nature Reviews. Neuroscience. 19 (8): 453–469. doi:10.1038/s41583-018-0026-z. ISSN 1471-0048. PMID 29934559. S2CID 49357675.
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