When he was around 5, his father left the family and Quayle moved with his mother and older brother to Cilcain to live with his maternal grandparents, who supported the children financially.

He then moved to University of Cambridge and worked with Alexander R. Todd on the blood pigment molecules of the Aphididae insects.

Following his research at Cambridge, in 1953 Quayle moved to University of California, Berkeley, USA and worked with Melvin Calvin on understanding the biosynthesis of sugars in plants for two years.

However, he sought a post with more biochemical, rather than chemical, opportunity and through a chance meeting ended up collaborating with Hans Kornberg to characterise both the glyoxylate cycle and the glycerate pathway at the MRC Unit for Research in Cell Metabolism at Oxford University that was directed by Hans Krebs.

[2] Quayle now changed the direction of his research to use the techniques he had learnt in the US to understand methylotrophic bacteria that make use of one carbon compounds as sources of energy and biomass.

Through this combined approach, they defined the biochemical pathways available to the bacterial methylotrophs for use of a range of one-carbon compounds, including methane, methanol, formaldehyde and carbon dioxide.

[1] From 1970 the group used the same approach to discover that single celled fungi utilised methanol using a further variation that they termed the dihydroxyacetone cycle.

[1] From 1967 Quayle advised the ICI company during the development of the Pruteen project that initially aimed to use methane to grow bacteria for use as animal feed.