Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford, UK

Research

Nasmyth is a world-leading expert in chromosomes, the packages of DNA found within our cells, and the proteins that control them. In the 1990s, he discovered cohesin, an important ring-shaped protein complex holding chromosomes together as cells divide. In 2008, he showed that cohesin actually traps chromosomes within its ring before it is cleaved to allow precise segregation of chromosomes. Professor Nasmyth has dominated the field of mitotic regulation making a big leap forward also for cancer research.

Academic Career

Nasmyth studied at the University of Edinburgh, followed by postdoctoral training at the University of Washington. After two years at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, he become a staff member at the Laboratory for Molecular Biology in Cambridge in 1982. He joined the Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna as a Senior Scientist in 1988 and became Director in 1997. In 2005, he assumed his present position.

Selected Honours & Memberships

FEBS Silver Medal (1995), Unilever Prize (1996), Louis-Jeantet Prize (1997), Wittgenstein Prize (1999)
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Royal Society, EMBO member