Nasmyth was born in London in 1952 of James Ashley (Jan) Nasmyth and Jenny Hughes.[4][8] His father Jan was doubly descended fromKing Charles II and founder of the billion dollar publishing companyArgus Media.[8][9] He attendedEton College, Berkshire, then theUniversity of York, where he studied Biology.[4] Nasmyth went on to complete his graduate studies in the group ofMurdoch Mitchison at theUniversity of Edinburgh. Here he worked on the cell cycle alongsidePaul Nurse[3] and his PhD thesis focused on the control of DNA replication infission yeast.[2] In Mitchison's lab he made substantial contributions to the study of the cell cycle in fission yeast isolating and characterising cell cycle mutants and the first identification of a gene product (DNA ligase) in these mutants.[10]
Kim Nasmyth explaining loop extrusion with a climbing rope The cohesin complex entrapping sister DNAs
Nasmyth joined Ben Hall's lab in Seattle as apostdoctoral researcher where he developed ways of cloning genes by complementation in yeast and, in collaboration with Steve Reed, cloned theCDC28 gene from the budding yeastSaccharomyces cerevisiae.[3]
As a group leader in Cambridge Nasmyth became interested in the phenomenon ofmating-type switching in yeast. Together with Kelly Tatchell he cloned theS. cerevisiae mating-type locus and found, surprisingly, that 'silent' copies of the mating-type genes including their promoters are maintained in the yeast chromosome. This represented the first case where theposition of a gene in the chromosome had demonstrable biological significance, and prompted Nasmyth to abandon work on the cell cycle for a time and concentrate instead on studying gene silencing.[3] He was one of the first to demonstrate that gene expression can be regulated through specific control elements which are distant from the start of transcription.[10]
Max Birnstiel invited Nasmyth to join him at the then newly foundedResearch Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) inVienna,Austria, where he was director. Nasmyth became one of the first three senior group leaders that Birnstiel recruited in 1986.[11] At the IMP, Nasmyth changed his focus from gene silencing back to cell cycle control. In the mid-1990s Nasmyth co-discovered theAPC/C and showed that its activity induces chromosome segregation.[12] Using temperature-sensitive mutants of the APC/C he found several genes which are required forsister chromatid cohesion[13] which we now know encode subunits of thecohesin complex. Nasmyth has since shown that cohesin forms a ring,[14] that sister chromatids are held together within this ring[15] and that they are released by cleavage of cohesin byseparase.[16] Following Max Birnstiel's retirement, Nasmyth became scientific director of the IMP in 1997.[17]
Nasmyth married Anna Dowson, daughter of SirPhilip Dowson, in 1982[31] and has two daughters.[4] His younger brother is furniture designer,Luke Hughes.[32] He enjoys skiing and climbing,[6] a hobby to which he attributes his theory of how cohesin works.[33][34] He also co-owns a vineyard in the south of France.[35] Nasmyth held a large number of shares in his fathers billion dollar companyArgus Media until its purchase by General Atlantic in 2016.[36][37] In 2014 he was appointed director of Badger Lane Management company.[5] During his time in Vienna, Nasmyth became Austriancitizen.[38]
^Schwob, E; Böhm, T; Mendenhall, M. D.; Nasmyth, K (1994). "The B-type cyclin kinase inhibitor p40SIC1 controls the G1 to S transition in S. Cerevisiae".Cell.79 (2):233–44.doi:10.1016/0092-8674(94)90193-7.PMID7954792.S2CID34939988.
^"Kim Nasmyth : Cancer Research UK". 15 November 2015. Archived from the original on 15 November 2015. Retrieved5 December 2017.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
