Sir David Ian Stuart (born 8 December 1953) is a Medical Research Council Professor of

Structural Biology Structural biology deals with structural analysis of living material (formed, composed of, and/or maintained and refined by living cells) at every level of organization. Early structural biologists throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries we ...

at the

Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics The Centre for Human Genetics (CHG) is a human genetics research centre of the Nuffield Department of Medicine in the Medical Sciences Division, University of Oxford, funded by the Wellcome Trust among others. Facilities & resources The cent ...

at the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

where he is also a

Fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...

Hertford College, Oxford Hertford College ( ), previously known as Magdalen Hall, is a colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. It is located on Catte Street in the centre of Oxford, directly opposite the main ga ...

. He is best known for his contributions to the

X-ray crystallography X-ray crystallography is the experimental science of determining the atomic and molecular structure of a crystal, in which the crystalline structure causes a beam of incident X-rays to Diffraction, diffract in specific directions. By measuring th ...

virus A virus is a submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living Cell (biology), cells of an organism. Viruses infect all life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea. Viruses are ...

es, in particular for determining the structures of

foot-and-mouth disease virus Foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) is a virus in the genus '' Aphthovirus'' that causes foot-and-mouth disease. As a member of the family ''Picornaviridae'', FMDV is a positive-sense, single-stranded RNA virus. Like other members of the picornav ...

bluetongue virus Bluetongue virus (BTV) is a dsRNA virus of the genus '' Orbivirus''. The virus causes Bluetongue disease.ICTV''Bluetongue virus'' EC 51, Berlin, Germany, July 2019; Email ratification March 2020 (MSL #35) BTV is relatively fragile and its infe ...

and the membrane-containing phages

PRD1 ''Tectiviridae'' is a family of viruses with 12 species in five genera. Bacteria serve as natural hosts. Tectiviruses have no head-tail structure, but are capable of producing tail-like tubes of ~ 60×10 nm upon adsorption or after chlorof ...

(the first structure of an enveloped virus) and PM2. He is also director of Instruct and Life Sciences Director at

Diamond Light Source Diamond Light Source (or Diamond) is the UK's national synchrotron light source science facility located at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire. Its purpose is to produce synchrotron light, intense beams of light whose spec ...

Education

Stuart was born in 1953 in

Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated ''Lancs'') is a ceremonial county in North West England. It is bordered by Cumbria to the north, North Yorkshire and West Yorkshire to the east, Greater Manchester and Merseyside to the south, and the Irish Sea to ...

. He was educated initially in

Helmshore Helmshore () is a village in the Rossendale Valley, Lancashire, England, south of Haslingden between the A56 and the B6235, north of Manchester. The population at the 2011 census was 5,805. The housing in Helmshore is mixed, with some two-up, ...

, Lancashire, and then in North

Devon Devon ( ; historically also known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by the Bristol Channel to the north, Somerset and Dorset to the east, the English Channel to the south, and Cornwall to the west ...

, at

Barnstaple Grammar School Barnstaple ( or ) is a river-port town and civil parish in the North Devon district of Devon, England. The town lies at the River Taw's lowest crossing point before the Bristol Channel. From the 14th century, it was licensed to export wool from ...

. He studied Biophysics at

King's College London King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public university, public research university in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of George IV of the United Kingdom, King George IV ...

, where he graduated with a BSc degree in 1974. He subsequently attended the

University of Bristol The University of Bristol is a public university, public research university in Bristol, England. It received its royal charter in 1909, although it can trace its roots to a Merchant Venturers' school founded in 1595 and University College, Br ...

and completed a

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

degree in the Biochemistry Department in 1979, working on the structure of the

enzyme An enzyme () is a protein that acts as a biological catalyst by accelerating chemical reactions. The molecules upon which enzymes may act are called substrate (chemistry), substrates, and the enzyme converts the substrates into different mol ...

pyruvate kinase Pyruvate kinase is the enzyme involved in the last step of glycolysis. It catalyzes the transfer of a phosphate group from phosphoenolpyruvate (PEP) to adenosine diphosphate (ADP), yielding one molecule of pyruvate and one molecule of ATP. Pyruv ...

in the laboratory of Hilary Muirhead.

Career and research

Stuart moved to Oxford in 1979 and worked with Louise Johnson on the structure of the enzyme

glycogen phosphorylase Glycogen phosphorylase is one of the phosphorylase enzymes (). Glycogen phosphorylase catalyzes the rate-limiting step in glycogenolysis in animals by releasing glucose-1-phosphate from the terminal alpha-1,4-glycosidic bond. Glycogen phosphor ...

before moving in 1981 to work at the Institute of Biophysics in

Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

, China, with Liang Dong-Cai on

insulin Insulin (, from Latin ''insula'', 'island') is a peptide hormone produced by beta cells of the pancreatic islets encoded in humans by the insulin (''INS)'' gene. It is the main Anabolism, anabolic hormone of the body. It regulates the metabol ...

. Returning to Oxford in 1983 to work with Johnson he then in 1985 set up his own research group in the Laboratory of Molecular Biophysics, focused mainly on virus–receptor interactions and virus assembly. In 1999 Stuart led the establishment of the Division of Structural Biology, in the Nuffield Department of Medicine. Stuart has solved the atomic structures of complex biological molecules and viruses, including

and the membrane-containing phages PRD1 (the first structure of an enveloped virus) and PM2. His structure of foot-and-mouth virus has assisted in the development of improved vaccines via structural vaccinology. He has also investigated the structure of the

HIV The human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV) are two species of '' Lentivirus'' (a subgroup of retrovirus) that infect humans. Over time, they cause acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a condition in which progressive failure of the im ...

reverse transcriptase A reverse transcriptase (RT) is an enzyme used to convert RNA genome to DNA, a process termed reverse transcription. Reverse transcriptases are used by viruses such as HIV and hepatitis B to replicate their genomes, by retrotransposon mobi ...

protein, facilitating targeted drug design. Stuart also develops methods in structural biology and researches protein structure and

evolution Evolution is the change in the heritable Phenotypic trait, characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. It occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on genetic variation, re ...

. Since 2008 Stuart has, as life science director, helped the development of the

, the UK's synchrotron light source. His former doctoral students include Susan Lea.

Honours and awards

Stuart has received a number of awards and honours for his work on viral structure, including: * Federation of European Biochemical Societies (FEBS) Anniversary Prize (1990) * Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS, 1996) *

Descartes Prize The Descartes Prize was an annual award in science given by the European Union, named in honour of the French mathematician and philosopher, René Descartes. The prizes recognized Outstanding Scientific and Technological Achievements Resulting f ...

(2002) *

Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences Fellowship of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci) is an award for medical scientists who are judged by the UK Academy of Medical Sciences for the "excellence of their science, their contribution to medicine and society and the range of the ...

(FMedSci, 2006) *

Gregori Aminoff Prize The Gregori Aminoff Prize is an international prize awarded since 1979 by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in the field of crystallography, rewarding "a documented, individual contribution in the field of crystallography, including areas concer ...

with Stephen C. Harrison by the

Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences () is one of the Swedish Royal Academies, royal academies of Sweden. Founded on 2 June 1739, it is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization that takes special responsibility for promoting nat ...

(2006) * European Crystallographic Association

Max Perutz Max Ferdinand Perutz (19 May 1914 – 6 February 2002) was an Austrian-born British molecular biologist, who shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with John Kendrew, for their studies of the structures of haemoglobin and myoglobin. He went ...

Prize (2007) * Honorary fil.Dr.h.c. degree,

University of Helsinki The University of Helsinki (, ; UH) is a public university in Helsinki, Finland. The university was founded in Turku in 1640 as the Royal Academy of Åbo under the Swedish Empire, and moved to Helsinki in 1828 under the sponsorship of Alexander ...

, Finland (2010) * Honorary

DSc DSC or Dsc may refer to: Education * Doctor of Science (D.Sc.) * District Selection Committee, an entrance exam in India * Doctor of Surgical Chiropody, superseded in the 1960s by Doctor of Podiatric Medicine Educational institutions * Dyal Sin ...

degree,

University of Leeds The University of Leeds is a public research university in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It was established in 1874 as the Yorkshire College of Science. In 1884, it merged with the Leeds School of Medicine (established 1831) and was renamed Y ...

(2011) * Honorary

degree, University of Bristol (2015) * Premio Città di Firenze for Molecular Sciences – Award from CERM (2016) *

Knighted A knight is a person granted an honorary title of a knighthood by a head of state (including the pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the church, or the country, especially in a military capacity. The concept of a knighthood ...

in the

2021 New Year Honours The 2021 New Year Honours are appointments by some of the 16 Commonwealth realms to various orders and honours to recognise and reward good works by citizens of those countries. The New Year Honours are awarded as part of the New Year celebratio ...

for services to medical research and the scientific community

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Stuart, David 1953 births British biologists X-ray crystallography Fellows of the Royal Society Fellows of the Academy of Medical Sciences (United Kingdom) Alumni of King's College London Alumni of the University of Bristol Living people Knights Bachelor Alumni of the University of Oxford