Jonathan Dallas George Jones (born 14 July 1954) is a senior scientist at the Sainsbury Laboratory and a professor at the University of East Anglia using molecular and genetic approaches to study disease resistance in plants.

Education

Jones was educated at the University of Cambridge where he studied the

Natural Sciences Tripos The Natural Sciences Tripos (NST) is the framework within which most of the science at the University of Cambridge is taught. The tripos includes a wide range of Natural Sciences from physics, astronomy, and geoscience, to chemistry and biology, ...

as a student of

Peterhouse, Cambridge Peterhouse is the oldest constituent college of the University of Cambridge in England, founded in 1284 by Hugh de Balsham, Bishop of Ely. Today, Peterhouse has 254 undergraduates, 116 full-time graduate students and 54 fellows. It is quite ...

and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1976 followed by a PhD in 1980 supervised by

Richard B. Flavell Richard Bailey Flavell CBE, FRS (born 11 October 1943) is a British molecular biologist, Chief Scientific Officer of Ceres, Inc., and was director of John Innes Centre from 1987 to 1998.‘FLAVELL, Dr Richard Bailey’, Who's Who 2014, A & C B ...

and

Gabriel Dover Gabriel A. Dover (13 December 1937 – 1 April 2018) was a British geneticist, best known for coining the term molecular drive in 1982 to describe a putative third evolutionary force operating distinctly from natural selection and genetic drift. ...

Research and career

After his PhD, Jones did postdoctoral research at Harvard University in

Frederick M. Ausubel Frederick M Ausubel (born September 2, 1945) is an American molecular biologist and professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School in Boston and is the Karl Winnacker Distinguished Investigator in the Department of Molecular Biology, Massachus ...

's lab.Jonathan Jones Along with collaborator

Jeffery Dangl Jeffery Lee Dangl (born October 13, 1957) is an American biologist. He is currently John N. Couch Professor of Biology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Education Dangl earned his BAS of Biological Sciences and Modern Literature ...

, he proposed the zigzag model for the co-evolution of plant resistance genes and pathogen effectors. He also proposed the Guard Hypothesis, which provides a testable explanation for how plants overcome the large number of arms used by pathogens to evoke disease while having only a limited set of plant proteins to defend itself. Jones has served as head of the Sainsbury Laboratory from 1994 to 1997 and 2003 – 2009. He is also a professor at University of East Anglia and has served as editor of ''

The Plant Cell ''The Plant Cell'' is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal of plant sciences, especially the areas of cell and molecular biology, genetics, development, and evolution. It is published by the American Society of Plant Biologists. The editor-i ...

'' and '' Genome Biology''. Other positions he has held include: *International Society of Plant Molecular Biology board member 1995-8 * Advisory Board 1995-8 of ''The Plant Journal'' * Editor of ''Plant Cell'' July 1998 -2004 *'' Current Opinion in Plant Biology'' (COPB) Editorial Board 1997–present *Invited Editor for COPB Plant/microbe interaction issue 1998 *Editor of '' Genome Biology'' 2001–2004 *Founder of Mendel Biotechnology, Inc. that has collaborated with Monsanto With George Coupland,

Liam Dolan Liam Dolan One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: is the Sherardian Professor of Botany in the Department of Biology at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxfor ...

, Nicholas Harberd, Alison Mary Smith, Cathie Martin, Robert Sablowski and Abigail Amey he is a co-author of the textbook ''Plant Biology''. In July 2010, Jones contributed an opinion piece to BBC News Online, outlining his stance on genetically modified food, genetically modified (GM) food crops. In the piece, Jones argued that if we are to 'feed the planet without destroying it... we need to use every tool in our toolbox, including GM'.

Awards and honours

Jones was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2003 One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: and has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 2015. He was awarded EMBO Membership in 1998.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Jones, Jonathan Dallas George 1954 births Living people Alumni of Peterhouse, Cambridge Harvard University people Academics of the University of East Anglia Fellows of the Royal Society Members of the European Molecular Biology Organization Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences British geneticists