Thomas S. Reese

With deep sadness, the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) notes the passing of Thomas Sargeant Reese, 89, on October 11, 2024. Reese was a former MBL Trustee and Society member, longtime faculty member in the MBL Neurobiology course (1975-2015; course co-director 1980-1984), and a world leader in structural neuroscience who ran a lab at the MBL for many years. He was a senior investigator and chief of the Section on Structural Cell Biology at the National Institutes of Health/NINDS for six decades. The MBL flag will be lowered in his memory.

When Reese first joined the MBL Neurobiology course faculty in 1975, he was in the midst of historic experiments with John Heuser, a postdoctoral scientist in his NIH lab. Reese and Heuser developed an electron microscopy (EM) technique called “freeze slamming” that allowed them to image fleeting events in neuronal communication that had never been captured before. In 1979, they made a major contribution, imaging synaptic vesicles “caught in the act” of releasing neurotransmitter. Today, their approach continues to be updated by other labs, and to contribute to significant discoveries in neuroscience.

Reese became especially well-integrated into the MBL Neurobiology course from 1980 to 1988, when he ran a year-round lab in the basement of MBL’s Loeb Laboratory while maintaining his NIH appointment. (He ran a summer lab at MBL for decades thereafter.) Reese’s lab hosted innumerable student projects, course training modules, and conversations about brain structure that could go on well into the night. He had an open-door policy, and a drive to help all.

“Really, what I have done is I have approached structural biology with a love and openness and really caring about it in such a way that I was able to welcome anyone who came along into my lab. We try to find something they know how to do and get them doing their best,” Reese said in 2015.

In 1983, Reese invited Ron Vale, then a graduate student at Stanford, into his year-round MBL lab. Vale was at MBL in search of squid for experiments, and Reese provided him with a laboratory home and his EM expertise. This led to a successful, multidisciplinary collaboration with several others at MBL and the historic discovery of kinesin, the motor protein, in squid axoplasm.

Recognizing Reese’s prodigious contributions to MBL research and education, “The Thomas Sargeant Reese Symposium: Forty Years of Structural Neuroscience at MBL” was held in 2015. In addition, each year the MBL presents the Thomas Sargeant Reese Endowed Lecture in Neurobiology.

Reese’s involvement with the MBL Neurobiology course “has been a centerpiece of my life,” he said in an MBL History Project video interview, in which he also describes other scientific discoveries he was part of in Woods Hole. Reese shared his curiosity and knowledge with generations of MBL investigators and students, who will also not forget his good humor. He will be deeply missed.

Reese leaves his wife, Carolyn Smith, also a scientist at the NIH; his daughters, Andrea Reese and Devin Reese; and his grandchildren, Camila, Owen, and Guy Cardwell.

Links:

MBL History Project Interview with Thomas Reese (2016)

Article on Thomas Reese Symposium at MBL (2015)

Photos from Thomas Reese Symposium (2015) by Andrea Reese

Below is a memorial notice for Reese from the National Institute of Neurological Disease and Stroke (NINDS).

It is with great sadness that I convey news of Dr. Thomas (Tom) Reese’s passing at the age of 89. Dr. Reese was a Senior Investigator and Chief of the Section on Structural Cell Biology in the NINDS Intramural Program, where he served the worldwide scientific community for six decades.

Dr. Reese graduated with a BA from Harvard College in 1957 and earned his MD from Columbia in 1962. He then served as a Research Medical Officer in NINDS (then named the National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Disorders and Stroke) and within four years assumed leadership of his own laboratory.

Dr. Reese was a world leader in structural neuroscience, developing cutting-edge applications that fundamentally changed our understanding of synapses and cells in the brain, as well as the barrier separating the brain from the bloodstream. His many contributions to neuroscience and cell biology were recognized in 1987 by his election to the National Academy of Sciences.

In his early work in the late 1960s, Dr. Reese used electron microscopy to examine the structural basis of the blood-brain barrier. His experiments with Morris Karnovsky showed that proteins in the bloodstream are prevented from entering the brain by tight junctions between vascular endothelial cells. This discovery continues to influence the design and delivery of therapeutics for brain diseases.

In the 1970s, Dr. Reese and his postdoc John Heuser carefully examined electron micrographs to delineate the different steps by which synaptic vesicle membrane is recycled for subsequent reuse at the neuromuscular junction. They went on to develop a revolutionary technique to precisely time rapid tissue freezing with electrical stimulation of motoneurons to capture the fleeting moment when neurotransmitter release occurs. This “freeze-slamming” technique conclusively demonstrated, for the first time, that neurotransmitter is released by fusion of synaptic vesicles with the presynaptic plasma membrane.

While maintaining his appointment at the NIH, Dr. Reese also set up a laboratory at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, MA to study giant axons in squid. He used his rapid-freeze EM methods in conjunction with video microscopy to observe fast axonal transport in real time and then visualize the axons transporting cargo. These techniques enabled Dr. Reese and his collaborators to discover kinesins, a class of motor proteins that we now know to be critical for axonal transport, mitosis, and a variety of other cellular functions. Dr. Reese maintained his Woods Hole full time for most of the 1980’s and was active in the MBL community and its educational programs for more than four decades. 

In the 2000s, Dr. Reese and his collaborators focused on the structural organization of the postsynaptic density (PSD), a specialized, extensive protein complex associated with the postsynaptic membrane. He discovered that the PSD is a dynamic structure that changes shape and protein composition rapidly with synaptic activity.  He also discovered that a new subcellular compartment, which he termed the pallium, is a principal site for regulatory machinery that underlies transmitter receptor targeting to and from synaptic microdomains. The PSD is now recognized to contain intricate molecular machinery critical for the reception, integration, and plasticity of neurotransmitter signaling. 

Towards the end of his career, Dr. Reese turned his focus to the evolution of the nervous system. He worked with his colleague and wife, Dr. Carolyn Smith, on Trichoplax, a tiny disk-shaped marine animal that has no synapses but can perform simple behaviors such as movement and digestion. They used Dr. Reese’s tried-and-true freezing and microscopy techniques to identify cells that could control locomotion and feeding to gain insights into how animals without synapses can generate behavior.

Dr. Reese’s philosophy to “learn by looking” drove him to develop cutting-edge techniques that were used to achieve fundamental insights into how synapses and cells work. Tom will be missed dearly, but his legacy will live on through his family, his seminal contributions to structural neurobiology, and generations of scientists who trained under, worked with, and were inspired by him.

With sadness, appreciation, and fond memories,

Jeffrey S. Diamond, Ph.D.
Senior Investigator
Scientific Director
NINDS Intramural Research Program