MRC Blood Group Unit [SEP] start time
MRC Blood Group Unit
The MRC Blood Group Unit, originally the Blood Group Research Unit, was a research unit of the British Medical Research Council from 1946 to 1995. Initially established in the Lister Institute, it transferred to the Galton Laboratory (the Genetics department) of University College, London in 1975, the original home of its predecessor.
The unit mainly used serological techniques to discover blood group antigens. Only in the last 10 years of it existence were monoclonal antibodies and molecular approaches adopted. Blood groups were used
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Career and research.
In 1985 Allshire joined Nicholas Hasties research group at the MRC Human Genetics Unit, Edinburgh (formerly MRC Clinical and Population Cytogentics Unit) as a postdoctoral researcher where he discovered that mammalian telomeres are composed of simple repetitive sequences similar to those of unicellular eukaryotes and that telomere length in blood cells shorten with age and are further eroded in cancerous cells. This work resulted from following the fate of fission yeast ("Schizosaccharomyces pombe") telomeres after introdroducing fission yeast chromosomes into mouse cell in collaoration with