MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit

The Unit was founded in 1927 using a donation from Sir William Dunn, who left £1 million to charity on his death in 1912. Part of this money was used to fund what was then called the Dunn Nutritional Laboratory, with its research supported by the Medical Research Council (MRC). Its original research focus was to investigate the role of vitamins in human health. Under the directorship of Egon Kodicek this focus changed to more general nutritional research. The Unit was restructured in 1998 under the directorship of Professor Sir John Walker to focus on mitochondrial research. The Unit was renamed in 2009 to the Mitochondrial Biology Unit to reflect its mitochondrial expertise. In March 2017 the Unit was transferred from the MRC to the University of Cambridge. The current director of the Unit is Professor Massimo Zeviani.[1]

The Unit has three major scientific aims:[2]

1. To understand the fundamental processes taking place in mitochondria
2. To understand the involvement of these processes in human diseases
3. To exploit knowledge of these fundamental processes for the development of new therapies to treat human diseases

The MBU is organised into eleven independent research groups[3] and includes 30-40 graduate students who are members of the University of Cambridge:

• Professor Massimo Zeviani - Molecular basis for inherited mitochondrial disease
• Professor Judy Hirst FRS - Understanding the molecular mechanism of complex I and its roles in human disease
• Professor Patrick Chinnery - Mitochondrial genomics and human diseases
• Dr Edmund Kunji - Understanding transport processes in mitochondria
• Dr Michal Minczuk - Discovering the genetic links between mitochondrial dysfunction and human disease
• Professor Mike Murphy - Targeting therapeutic and probe molecules to mitochondria, mitochondrial radical production and redox signalling
• Dr Julien Prudent - Interactions between mitochondria and the endoplasmic reticulum in cell physiology and disease
• Dr Alex Whitworth - Genetic models of neurodegenerative disease
• Professor Sir John Walker FRS - Understanding the molecular mechanism of how ATP is made
• Professor Leonid Sazanov FRS - Structural Biology of Membrane Protein Complexes

The MBU is the home of several freely-accessible scientific web-resources:

MitoMiner - a mitochondrial proteomics database that provides information on cellular localisation, function and species & tissue specific expression

The Integrated Mitochondrial Protein Index (IMPI) - a list of all the genes and proteins that make up the mammalian mitochondrion

Professor Judy Hirst (2020 - ) [4]

Professor Massimo Zeviani (2013 - 2019)

Professor Sir John Walker FRS (1998 - 2013)[1][5]

Dr Roger Whitehead (1973 – 1998)

Dr Egon Kodicek CBE FRS (1963 - 1973)

Dr Leslie Harris (1929 - 1963)

Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins (1927 - 1929)

• Sir William Dunn Institute of Biochemistry - another beneficiary of Dunn's will

• Official website