Judy Hirst

Judy Hirst FRS FRSC is a British scientist specialising in mitochondrial biology. She is Director[2] of the MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit at the University of Cambridge.

Judy Hirst

FRS FRSC
Education
Alma materUniversity of Oxford (BA, DPhil)
AwardsFellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (2019)
Scientific career
InstitutionsUniversity of Cambridge
Scripps Research Institute
ThesisElectron transport in redox enzymes (1997)
Doctoral advisorFraser Armstrong[1]
Websitewww.mrc-mbu.cam.ac.uk/people/judy-hirst

Education and early life

Hirst grew up in a village near Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, and attended King James's School and Greenhead College,[3] Huddersfield and studied for an M.A. in chemistry at St John's College, Oxford.[2] Hirst then was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree at Lincoln College, Oxford for research supervised by Fraser Armstrong on the electron transport in redox enzymes in 1997.[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 2018 Hirst is Dean of the College and Fellow and Director of Studies in Chemistry at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge,[4] having served 5 years as Depute Director, and three years as Assistant Director. Her main research interest is mitochondrial complex I.[2]

Publications

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

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] 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.' [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]

References
  1. Hirst, Judy (1997). Electron transport in redox enzymes. bodleian.ox.ac.uk (DPhil thesis). University of Oxford. OCLC 557413704. EThOS uk.bl.ethos.364043.
  2. "Judy Hirst FRS | MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit". www.mrc-mbu.cam.ac.uk. Retrieved 2020-08-16.
  3. "Dr Judy Hirst MA, DPhil, FRS". www.greenhead.ac.uk. Retrieved 2020-08-16.
  4. "Dr Judy Hirst MA, DPhil (Oxon), FRSC". Corpus Christi College. Retrieved 10 May 2018.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. Biner, Olivier; Fedor, Justin G.; Yin, Zhan; Hirst, Judy (2020-06-19). "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. PMID 32383867.
  8. "RSC Interdisciplinary Prize 2018 Winner". www.rsc.org. Retrieved 2020-08-16.
  9. "Judy Hirst". royalsociety.org. Retrieved 10 May 2018.
  10. "2018 Interdisciplinary Prize Winner: Dr Judy Hirst". Royal Society of Chemistry. Retrieved 10 May 2018.
  11. "New Fellows: 50 top biomedical and health scientists join the Academy | The Academy of Medical Sciences". acmedsci.ac.uk. Retrieved 2020-08-16.
  12. "Professor Judy Hirst | The Academy of Medical Sciences". acmedsci.ac.uk. Retrieved 2020-08-16.
  13. "Professor Judy Hirst FRS receives Keilin Memorial Lecture Award". Corpus Christi College University of Cambridge. 2019-04-01. Retrieved 2020-08-16.
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