Caroline McGuigan, former EMBL Heidelberg Technical Assistant, passed away on Thursday 16 July 2026 at the age of 66.
It is with great sadness that we share the news of the passing of Caroline McGuigan. Caroline was a Technical Assistant in the Zeller Group in the Genome Biology Unit at EMBL Heidelberg from 1989-1998. She also worked in Iain Mattaj’s lab for many years. Many alumni will remember Caroline as the wife of long-serving former EMBL Group Leader Toby Gibson. She died on Thursday 16 July at the age of 66 from the effects of a progressive illness. May she rest in peace.
“Caroline was born and raised in Glasgow. She studied Biochemistry at the University of Stirling. Her laboratory career began in Aberdeen before joining Jo Butler at the LMB in Cambridge where I first met her, then to London to work with Richard Treisman. In 1989 she moved to EMBL, where she joined Iain Mattaj’s lab.
In the Mattaj lab, Caroline spent many hours studying nuclear transport through Xenopus oocyte microinjection, painstaking work at the microscope that often left her with backache.
On a holiday in the west coast of Scotland, we drove past a hotel near “rest and be thankful” in Argyll where Caroline had once had a summer job. We stayed a few days in Tobermory (Island of Mull). We visited the famous Abbey on neighbouring Iona and were also impressed by the stacked trays of crabs on the jetty. It turned out that they would be in Paris by next morning. Whereas we were less than impressed by the tinned crab soup provided by the restaurant in Tobermory. We took the boat to Staffa to see Fingal’s cave. Mendelssohn’s Overture will always remind me of Caroline.
Caroline had a somewhat dry sense of humour and a gift for choosing thoughtful surprises. For my 60th birthday, she, in cahoots with Manjeet and Manisha Kumar, asked Konditorei Zimmermann to create a World Cup cake showing England playing Sweden, with an elderly marzipan bloke looking on…
We had hoped one day to take the Hurtigruten mail boat to Trondheim via the Norwegian fjords, but sadly never made that journey.
These are a couple of the memories of Caroline that I will cherish.”
Toby Gibson, former EMBL Group Leader 1986-2023
“Caroline joined the lab when it was roughly 5 years old, in 1989. In those early years, the lab TAs changed over quite quickly for diverse reasons. But Caroline stayed for the standard 9-year contract. She was the only person who came to the lab with experience of Xenopus oocytes, gained in a spell with Richard Harland, and “paid the price” for her expertise by joining a Dutch postdoc, Pierre Vankan, in carrying out a series of very complex double microinjection experiments to examine structure-function relationships in the U4-U6 small nuclear ribonucleoprotein. These were exhausting experiments but very successful. By the time Pierre left EMBL in 1991, a new wave of postdocs had joined the lab, including Joe Lewis, Elisa Izaurralde and Artur Jarmolowski. Caroline joined them in a pair of projects involving some microinjection but much more biochemistry and “standard” molecular biology. Eventually, as if by magic, the two projects converged to produce several excellent publications. More importantly Caroline was involved via the others in lab social life which, for a while at least, she very much enjoyed. Then life with Toby changed her priorities.
“My fondest memory of Caroline was her comment one day when people were complaining about how obsessed I was with everyone working hard to produce results. She had worked with Richard Treisman before joining EMBL and said, “Iain is NOTHING compared to Richard Treisman”. I was in the office adjacent to the lab and wasn’t supposed to hear but burst out laughing. And any time lab members complained after that I reminded them of Caroline’s judgement. She was a wonderful, generous person and colleague whose death comes much too early.”
Iain Mattaj, former Director General and EMBL Heidelberg Group Leader and Senior Scientist, 1985-2018
“Caroline was the first real contact once I arrived at EMBL. I had a decent theoretical knowledge and could read English well but had very shallow experimental experience and weak conversation skills. She got me under her wing and told me about the lab organisation, rotations, etc.
“I recently came across a photocopy of her copy of a list of common lab solutions with her name and annotations. She had patience with my slow utterances and waited for me to get up to speed. Then, she got me into reading Iain Banks. In the process, we discovered commonalities and became friends.
“Once during a bike ride, I asked, ‘what is the English name of that black bird over there?’ ‘Blackbird’. We did several late-night dinners at my place in the guesthouse with Toby as well. We did not have a long time together, but we did our best. It definitely left a lasting mark and built a staying foundation both scientific and human.
Chiara Gamberi, former EMBL Heidelberg postdoc, 1994-1996.
“I remember Caroline from our days together at EMBL in Heidelberg, where her reserved kindness and wonderfully dry sense of humour made her such great company in the lab. As fellow Scots, we often understood each other with little more than a shared glance, and I will always remember the warmth behind her unassuming nature.”
Gary Davidson, former EMBL Heidelberg predoc, 1996-2000.
“Dear Caroline,
I have known you since 1989, when we both started at EMBL in the Gene Expression Unit, as it was called back then. Over the nine years that followed, we not only worked in neighboring labs, but also became close friends. At the same time, we became mothers to two boys of the same ages, adding another wonderful bond to our friendship.
Our lives crossed in so many ways. We met at the EMBL Kinderkrippe, in each other’s homes, and on playgrounds throughout Heidelberg. I have so many fond and funny memories of those years, filled with laughter, friendship, and the shared joys and challenges of being young mothers.
Even as the years passed and our lives changed, our friendship remained. In recent years, Maria, you, and I would meet for lunch or dinner, and those hours together were always very special. There was so much laughter and such easy companionship. Your warmth, your unmistakable Scottish wit, and your wonderful sense of humour made those hours together very special, as did the jokes you so often sent our way.
Thank you for 37 years of friendship, the conversations, the jokes, and the many moments we shared. I will treasure those memories and carry them with me.
Rest in peace, my dear friend.”
Britta Schläger, former EMBL Heidelberg Research Assistant, 1989-1998.
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