Rate My Professor Jamie Blaza

Professor Jamie Blaza is a UKRI Future Leader Fellow and Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of York, leading the York Bioenergetics Lab as part of the York Structural Biology Laboratory. Appointed in 2018, he established cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) facilities at the university to support his independent research career focused on bioenergetics. Prior to this, Blaza earned an undergraduate degree in Microbiology from the University of Leeds and the National University of Singapore. He completed his PhD at the MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit, University of Cambridge, supervised by Judy Hirst, where he developed biophysical methods to investigate proton and electron transfer reactions in mammalian mitochondrial systems. Subsequently, as an MRC Career Development Fellow at Cambridge, he acquired expertise in cryo-EM. He also conducted a brief postdoctoral stint in Ben Luisi’s laboratory in the Cambridge Department of Biochemistry, studying bacterial antibiotic transporters.

Blaza's research specializes in bioenergetics, utilizing cryo-EM to determine high-resolution structures and mechanisms of respiratory enzymes in mammalian mitochondria and pathogenic bacteria, including those relevant to antibiotic resistance in mycobacteria. Recent collaborative efforts extend to carbon fixation and glycoscience. His influential publications include "A promiscuous mechanism to phase separate eukaryotic carbon fixation in the green lineage" (Nature Plants, 2024), "Structural insight on the mechanism of an electron-bifurcating [FeFe] hydrogenase" (eLife, 2022), "CryoEM structures of complex I from mouse heart mitochondria in two biochemically-defined states" (Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, 2018), "Structure of mammalian respiratory complex I in the deactive state" (Structure, 2018), "The enigma of the respiratory chain supercomplex" (Cell Metabolism, 2017), and "Kinetic evidence against partitioning of the ubiquinone pool and the catalytic relevance of respiratory-chain supercomplexes" (PNAS, 2014). Blaza was awarded the UKRI Future Leader Fellowship in 2021 and serves on the Journal of Biological Chemistry Editorial Board for bioenergetics. His work has significantly advanced structural insights into energy transduction and antibiotic targets.