BSc (Hons) (1988; Imperial College, London) PhD (1992; University of Cambridge)
Personal Chair
- About
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- Email Address
- j.pettitt@abdn.ac.uk
- Telephone Number
- +44 (0)1224 437516
- Office Address
School of Medicine, Medical Sciences and Nutrition
Room 4:38, Institute of Medical Sciences- School/Department
- School of Medicine, Medical Sciences and Nutrition
Biography
Jonathan Pettitt graduated from Imperial College with an upper second class degree in Biochemistry. He then carried out postgraduate research within the Department of Pathology, University of Cambridge, investigating the structure and expression of collagen genes in the parasitic nematode Ascaris suum. Whilst at Cambridge he was seduced by the many charms of the non-parasitic nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, and upon completing his PhD he went to Bill Wood’s lab at the University of Colorado, Boulder as an HFSPO long term postdoctoral fellow to study C. elegans development. In 1994, he obtained a two year EMBO fellowship to continue this work in the laboratory of Ronald Plasterk at the Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam, and learn the reverse genetics techniques pioneered there. He moved to the University of Aberdeen in 1996 where he became group leader and Lecturer in genetics within the newly built Institute of Medical Sciences.
- Research
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Research Overview
Professor Jonathan Pettitt studies the mechanistic basis of specific RNA processing events using the nematode C. elegans as a model organism (aberdeenwormlab.org/). The main focus of the lab is understanding spliced leader trans-splicing, with the long-term goal of developing drugs that target this essential nematode-specific process. Such drugs are needed to treat the myriad parasitic nematodes that threaten both human and animal health, and impact global food security. Parallel work seeks to understand cap-adjacent RNA methylation, a modification that is found in most human messenger RNAs but whose functional significance remains unknown.
Research Areas
Biomedical Sciences
Research Specialisms
- Genetics
Our research specialisms are based on the Higher Education Classification of Subjects (HECoS) which is HESA open data, published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence.
Funding and Grants
BBSRC (2020 - 2023). Understanding the mechanism of a nematode molecular Achilles' heel.
- Publications
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Page 1 of 4 Results 1 to 10 of 39
A nematode-specific ribonucleoprotein complex mediates interactions between the major nematode spliced leader snRNP and its target pre-mRNAs
Nucleic Acids Research, vol. 52, no. 12, pp. 7245-7260Contributions to Journals: ArticlesBoth trust in, and polarization of trust in, relevant sciences have increased through the COVID-19 pandemic
PloS ONE, vol. 18, no. 3, pp. e0278169Contributions to Journals: Articles#ESHREjc report: failed fertilization: is genetic incompatibility the elephant in the room?
Human reproduction (Oxford, England), vol. 38, no. 2, pp. 324-327Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/humrep/deac265
- [ONLINE] View publication in Scopus
People with more extreme attitudes towards science have self-confidence in their understanding of science, even if this is not justified
PLoS Biology, vol. 21, no. 1, e3001915Contributions to Journals: ArticlesTES-1/Tes and ZYX-1/Zyxin protect junctional actin networks under tension during epidermal morphogenesis in the C. elegans embryo
Current Biology, vol. 32, no. 23, pp. 5189-5199Contributions to Journals: ArticlesA novel, essential trans-splicing protein connects the nematode SL1 snRNP to the CBC-ARS2 complex
Nucleic Acids Research, vol. 50, no. 13, pp. 7591-7607Contributions to Journals: ArticlesSLIDR and SLOPPR: flexible identification of spliced leader trans-splicing and prediction of eukaryotic operons from RNA-Seq data
BMC Bioinformatics, vol. 22, 140Contributions to Journals: ArticlesSLIDR and SLOPPR: Flexible identification of spliced leadertrans-splicing and prediction of eukaryotic operons from RNA-Seq data
Other Contributions: Other Contributions- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.12.23.423594
Resolution of polycistronic RNA by SL2 trans-splicing is a widely-conserved nematode trait
RNA , vol. 26, no. 12, pp. 1891-1904Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1261/rna.076414.120
- [ONLINE] View publication in Scopus
Deep evolutionary origin of nematode SL2 trans-splicing revealed by genome-wide analysis of the Trichinella spiralis transcriptome
bioRxivContributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1101/642082
- [ONLINE] http://biorxiv.org/cgi/content/short/642082v1?rss=1
- [ONLINE] View publication in Mendeley