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.
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.
#ESHREjc report: failed fertilization: is genetic incompatibility the elephant in the room?
Makieva, S., Fraire-Zamora, J. J., Mincheva, M., Uraji, J., Ali, Z. E., Ammar, O. F., Liperis, G., Serdarogullari, M., Bianchi, E., Pettitt, J., Sermon, K., Bhattacharya, S., Massarotti, C.
Human reproduction (Oxford, England), vol. 38, no. 2, pp. 324-327
TES-1/Tes and ZYX-1/Zyxin protect junctional actin networks under tension during epidermal morphogenesis in the C. elegans embryo
Lynch, A., Zhu, Y., Lucas, B., Winkelman, J., Bai, K., Martin, S., Block, S., Slabodnick, M., Audhya, A., Goldstein, B., Pettitt, J., Gardel, M., Hardin, J.
A novel, essential trans-splicing protein connects the nematode SL1 snRNP to the CBC-ARS2 complex
Fasimoye, R. Y., Spencer, R. E., Soto Martin, E., Eijlers, P., Elmassoudi, H., Brivio, S., Mangana, C., Sabele, V., Rechtorikova, R., Wenzel, M., Connolly, B., Pettitt, J., Müller, B. M.
Nucleic Acids Research, vol. 50, no. 13, pp. 7591-7607