Judy Hirst is a British scientist specialising in mitochondrial biology. She is Director of the

MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit The MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit (formerly the MRC Dunn Human Nutrition Unit) is a department of the School of Clinical Medicine at the University of Cambridge, funded through a strategic partnership between the Medical Research Council and th ...

at the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world's third oldest surviving university and one of its most pr ...

Education and early life

Hirst grew up in Lepton, a village near

Huddersfield Huddersfield is a market town in the Kirklees district in West Yorkshire, England. It is the administrative centre and largest settlement in the Kirklees district. The town is in the foothills of the Pennines. The River Holme's confluence into ...

, West Yorkshire, and attended King James's School and

Greenhead College Greenhead College is a sixth form college, and former grammar school, located in Huddersfield, in the county of West Yorkshire, England. The current principal is Simon Lett. With over 2,700 students, it is a large sixth form college, attractin ...

, Huddersfield and studied for an M.A. in chemistry at St John's College, Oxford. Hirst then was awarded a

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

degree at Lincoln College, Oxford for research supervised by Fraser Armstrong on the

electron transport An electron transport chain (ETC) is a series of protein complexes and other molecules that transfer electrons from electron donors to electron acceptors via redox reactions (both reduction and oxidation occurring simultaneously) and couples thi ...

redox Redox (reduction–oxidation, , ) is a type of chemical reaction in which the oxidation states of substrate change. Oxidation is the loss of electrons or an increase in the oxidation state, while reduction is the gain of electrons or a ...

enzyme Enzymes () are proteins that act as biological catalysts by accelerating chemical reactions. The molecules upon which enzymes may act are called substrates, and the enzyme converts the substrates into different molecules known as products ...

s in 1997.

Career and research

Following her D.Phil., Hirst held a fellowship at the

Scripps Research Institute Scripps Research, previously known as The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI), is a nonprofit American medical research facility that focuses on research and education in the biomedical sciences. Headquartered in San Diego, California, the institu ...

in California, before moving to Cambridge. Hirst is Dean of the College and Fellow and Director of Studies in Chemistry at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, having served 5 years as Depute Director, and three years as Assistant Director. Her main research interest is

mitochondrial complex I Respiratory complex I, (also known as NADH:ubiquinone oxidoreductase, Type I NADH dehydrogenase and mitochondrial complex I) is the first large protein complex of the respiratory chains of many organisms from bacteria to humans. It catalyzes the ...

Publications

Hirst has been published in 2018 on ''Open questions: respiratory chain supercomplexes - why are they there and what do they do?'' and working with Justin Fedor, published research on mitochondrial supercomplexes in ''

Cell Metabolism Metabolism (, from el, μεταβολή ''metabolē'', "change") is the set of life-sustaining chemical reactions in organisms. The three main functions of metabolism are: the conversion of the energy in food to energy available to run cell ...

''. Recent research in her team includes a study, published in May 2020 by the ''

American Chemical Society The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a scientific society based in the United States that supports scientific inquiry in the field of chemistry. Founded in 1876 at New York University, the ACS currently has more than 155,000 members at all ...

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. A full list of Hirst's publications are on her MRC webpage.

Awards and honours

Early in her career, Hirst was awarded

EMBO Embo ( gd, Eurabol, IPA: �iaɾəpɔɫ̪ is a village in the Highland Council Area in Scotland and the former postal county of Sutherland, about north-northeast of Dornoch. On 16 July 1988, Embo declared itself independent from the rest of the ...

Young Investigator Award (2001) and Young Investigator Award from the

Royal Society of Chemistry The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) is a learned society (professional association) in the United Kingdom with the goal of "advancing the chemical sciences". It was formed in 1980 from the amalgamation of the Chemical Society, the Royal Instit ...

Inorganic Biochemistry Discussion Group (2006). Hirst was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2018. She was awarded an Interdisciplinary Prize of the

in the same year. In 2019, Hirst was elected Fellow of the

Academy of Medical Sciences The Academy of Medical Sciences is an organisation established in the UK in 1998. It is one of the four UK National Academies, the others being the British Academy, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society. Its mission is to adv ...

which was cited as '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.' 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'.

External links

* Publications http://www.mrc-mbu.cam.ac.uk/people/judy-hirst/publications * Keilin Memorial Award https://www.biochemistry.org/grants-and-awards/awards/the-keilin-memorial-lecture/

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hirst, Judy 21st-century biologists 21st-century English scientists 21st-century British women scientists Cell biologists English biologists English women biologists Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Alumni of St John's College, Oxford Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge Female Fellows of the Royal Society Fellows of the Royal Society Fellows of the Royal Society of Chemistry Fellows of the Academy of Medical Sciences (United Kingdom) 21st-century English women