Frances Ashcroft: ion channels and diabetes

Professor Frances Ashcroft is a Royal Society Research Professor at the University of Oxford and director of OXION, a training and research programme on the physiology of ion channels, the proteins which are currently at the forefront of scientific research. Her ground-breaking research has shown how changes in blood glucose levels regulate insulin secretion from the pancreas and how this process is impaired in Type 2 diabetes. She is visiting New Zealand to deliver the 2015 Royal Society Distinguished Speaker Lecture, The Spark of Life, discussing how the electric signals in our cells produced by the ion channels govern every aspect of our lives. The lecture has been delivered in Wellington, Nelson, Dunedin, Christchurch and Wanaka, with the final presentation at the Auckland Museum on 24 March.