Judy Hirst
Physical Chemist
- King James's School, Almondbury
- Greenhead College
Scripps Research Institute
Judy Hirst FRS FMedSci is a British scientist specialising in mitochondrial biology. She is Director[2] of the MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit at the University of Cambridge.
Early life and education
Hirst grew up in Lepton, a village near Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, and attended King James's School and Greenhead College, Huddersfield.[3] She studied for an M.A. in chemistry at St John's College, Oxford,[2] and then was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree at Lincoln College, Oxford, in 1997, for research supervised by Fraser Armstrong on electron transport in redox enzymes.[1]
Career and research
Following her D.Phil., Hirst held a fellowship at the Scripps Research Institute in California, before moving to Cambridge.[4]
As of 2023[update] Hirst is a professorial fellow and Director of Studies in Natural Sciences Chemistry at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge,[4] and since 2020 has been director of the MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit having previously been its assistant director (2011-2014) and deputy director (2014-2020). Her main research interest is mitochondrial complex I.[2]
Hirst has been published in 2018 on Open questions: respiratory chain supercomplexes – why are they there and what do they do?[5] and working with Justin Fedor, published research on mitochondrial supercomplexes in Cell Metabolism.[6] Recent research in her team includes a study, published in May 2020 by the American Chemical Society Synthetic Biology on 'Adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the cellular energy currency, is essential for life. The ability to provide a constant supply of ATP is therefore crucial for the construction of artificial cells in synthetic biology' which has developed a 'minimal system for cellular respiration and energy regeneration'.[7]
Awards and honours
Early in her career, Hirst was awarded EMBO Young Investigator Award (2001) and Young Investigator Award from the Royal Society of Chemistry Inorganic Biochemistry Discussion Group (2006).[8]
Hirst was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2018.[9] She was awarded an Interdisciplinary Prize of the Royal Society of Chemistry in the same year.[10] In 2019, Hirst was elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences[11] with the citation:
Judy Hirst, Professor of Biological Chemistry at the MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit, Cambridge, has had a definitive hand in every advance towards defining the highly complex mechanism of complex I catalysis, and has developed new physical and biochemical methods to address the elusive coupling mechanism between the redox reaction and proton translocation. She established the mechanism of complex I inhibition by the anti-diabetic drug metformin, and has used kinetic and thermodynamic strategies to define how superoxide production by complex I, responds to the intramitochondrial NADH/NAD+ ratio to directly link two pathological effects of complex I dysfunction. This seminal work has brought understanding that is fundamental to critical issues of health and disease on a global stage.[12]
Hirst was awarded Keilin Memorial Lecture and Medal in 2020 for research which:
has made pivotal contributions to understanding energy conversion in complex redox enzymes: how they capture the energy released by a redox reaction to power proton translocation across a membrane, or catalyse the interconversion of chemical bond energy and electrical potential. She is known particularly for her work on mammalian respiratory complex I (NADH: ubiquinone oxidoreductase), an energy-transducing, mitochondrial redox enzyme of fundamental and medical importance, and for solving its structure by electron cryomicroscopy.[13][14]
References
- ^ a b Hirst, Judy (1997). Electron transport in redox enzymes. bodleian.ox.ac.uk (DPhil thesis). University of Oxford. OCLC 557413704. EThOS uk.bl.ethos.364043.
- ^ a b c "Judy Hirst FRS | MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit". www.mrc-mbu.cam.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 8 May 2019. Retrieved 16 August 2020.
- ^ "Dr Judy Hirst MA, DPhil, FRS". www.greenhead.ac.uk. Retrieved 16 August 2020.
- ^ a b "Dr Judy Hirst MA DPhil (Oxford) FRS FMedSci". Corpus Christi College. Retrieved 3 July 2023.
- ^ Hirst, Judy (2018). "Open questions: respiratory chain supercomplexes-why are they there and what do they do?". BMC Biol. 16 (1): 111. doi:10.1186/s12915-018-0577-5. ISSN 1741-7007. PMC 6211484. PMID 30382836.
- ^ Fedor, Justin; Hirst, Judy (2018). "Mitochondrial Supercomplexes Do Not Enhance Catalysis by Quinone Channeling". Cell Metab. 28 (3): 525–531.e4. doi:10.1016/j.cmet.2018.05.024. ISSN 1932-7420. PMC 6125145. PMID 29937372.
- ^ Biner, Olivier; Fedor, Justin G.; Yin, Zhan; Hirst, Judy (19 June 2020). "Bottom-Up Construction of a Minimal System for Cellular Respiration and Energy Regeneration". ACS Synthetic Biology. 9 (6): 1450–1459. doi:10.1021/acssynbio.0c00110. PMC 7611821. PMID 32383867.
- ^ "RSC Interdisciplinary Prize 2018 Winner". www.rsc.org. Retrieved 16 August 2020.
- ^ "Judy Hirst". royalsociety.org. Retrieved 10 May 2018.
- ^ "2018 Interdisciplinary Prize Winner: Dr Judy Hirst". Royal Society of Chemistry. Retrieved 10 May 2018.
- ^ "New Fellows: 50 top biomedical and health scientists join the Academy | The Academy of Medical Sciences". acmedsci.ac.uk. Retrieved 16 August 2020.
- ^ "Professor Judy Hirst | The Academy of Medical Sciences". acmedsci.ac.uk. Retrieved 16 August 2020.
- ^ "The Keilin Memorial Lecture". www.biochemistry.org. Retrieved 3 July 2023.
- ^ "Professor Judy Hirst FRS receives Keilin Memorial Lecture Award". Corpus Christi College University of Cambridge. 1 April 2019. Retrieved 16 August 2020.
External links
- Official website
- Judy Hirst publications indexed by Google Scholar
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