James Naismith - Biography#

Naismith graduated from Edinburgh with a first class degree in Chemistry 1989. He then moved to Manchester to study with David Garner, Bill Hunter and John Helliwell on the structure of nature's molecules graduating with the thesis prize in 1992. He won a NATO fellowship and moved to the lab of Steve Sprang for two years at the Howard Hugh Medical Institute, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Centre. There he published the first apo structure of the TNF receptor.

Naismith started structural biology at St Andrews University in 1995. He led to a bid to the Wellcome Trust which funded a new building and created a four department (physics, chemistry, medicine &biology) institute.

His laboratory defined the structural biochemistry of the dTDP-L-rhamnose pathway of pathogenic bacteria, as well as other notable mechanistic firsts including the fluorinating enzyme & regioselective chlorination. He then moved to study membrane proteins and more recently he has characterized the transport of siderophores across the bacterial outer membrane. He used his advanced ERC grant to add synthetic chemistry and fully characterized the patellamide bio-synthetic pathway, making novel compounds and spinning out a company.

In 2017 Naismith moved to Oxford to head the Research Complex at Harwell (where he renewed its quinquennial funding. He became interim co-lead for the Rosalind Franklin and drove the project becoming the first Director in 6/19. He oversaw completion of the building to time and budget, setting the scientific vision for this new autonomous Institute with a focus on cryo-electron tomography (£25M project from Wellcome)

His work on nanobodies has attracted considerable attention with structural insights from crystallography and cryo-EM. These topical agents are potent as prophylactics and therapeutics in animals.