My wife, Marion Ecob-Prince, who has died aged 74, was a scientist who spent her career studying the neuromuscular junction, where nerves and muscle fibres meet. Working in laboratories in New York, Newcastle and Glasgow, she developed tissue culture techniques to study the progression of a range of neuromuscular diseases that can cause severe pain, muscle atrophy and numbness.
Born in Heanor, in Derbyshire, to Anne (nee Ford), an assistant in a post office, and John Ecob, a delivery driver, Marion attended Spondon Park grammar school in Derby, where she was an excellent fencer, captain of the netball team and head girl. In 1968 she went to Bristol University to study microbiology, and in her fresher year won the British universities ladies fencing championship (foil).
After graduation Marion was awarded a Kennedy scholarship to study for a year at Harvard University in the US. While there she became the New England fencing champion.
When she returned she began a PhD at Cambridge University. Based at Addenbrooke’s hospital, she looked at how the viruses that cause measles and Dawson disease interacted in nerve cell cultures.
Her PhD was awarded in 1975, after which she became a researcher at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, before moving across the city to Mount Sinai hospital.
Returning to the UK in 1978, she joined the muscular dystrophy laboratory at Newcastle general hospital, under the neurologist John Walton, making a particular study of Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a severe form of the condition that mainly affects boys.
In 1988 she moved to Glasgow University to use her tissue culture technique to investigate the use of the herpes virus as a vector to deliver medication into cell nuclei. In 1994 she took up a position as assistant registrar at Newcastle University medical school, before retiring in 1999.
Marion married Simon Johnston in 1973 and they divorced in 1982. We married in 1985 and spent many wonderful holidays together, camping in the mountains of Washington and Oregon and walking all over Europe.
Marion’s interests were always related to activity; aside from being a keen walker, she liked to ski, play squash and to cycle. However, her main passion was for the garden that she designed, created and worked in. Her approach to gardening was the same as her science: keen observation, experimentation and meticulous record keeping.
She is survived by me and her twin brother, David.
