John Stuart O’Neill (born 2 June 1979) is a British molecular and circadian biologist. O’Neill is currently a Principal Investigator at the MRC

Laboratory of Molecular Biology The Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) is a research institute in Cambridge, England, involved in the revolution in molecular biology which occurred in the 1950–60s. Since then it has remained a major medical r ...

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. His work focuses on the fundamental mechanisms that sustain

circadian rhythm A circadian rhythm (), or circadian cycle, is a natural oscillation that repeats roughly every 24 hours. Circadian rhythms can refer to any process that originates within an organism (i.e., Endogeny (biology), endogenous) and responds to the env ...

s in

eukaryotic cells The eukaryotes ( ) constitute the domain of Eukaryota or Eukarya, organisms whose cells have a membrane-bound nucleus. All animals, plants, fungi, seaweeds, and many unicellular organisms are eukaryotes. They constitute a major group of li ...

Academic career

O'Neill studied undergraduate biochemistry at New College,

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. He went on to join King's College,

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, where he undertook his

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research at the MRC

, under the supervision of

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, on the subject of cAMP signalling in the

suprachiasmatic nucleus The suprachiasmatic nucleus or nuclei (SCN) is a small region of the brain in the hypothalamus, situated directly above the optic chiasm. It is responsible for regulating sleep cycles in animals. Reception of light inputs from photosensitive r ...

of the

hypothalamus The hypothalamus (: hypothalami; ) is a small part of the vertebrate brain that contains a number of nucleus (neuroanatomy), nuclei with a variety of functions. One of the most important functions is to link the nervous system to the endocrin ...

(SCN). For his post-doctoral research, O’Neill investigated circadian rhythms in plants and algae with

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at the

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and then subsequently in human cells with

Akhilesh Reddy Akhilesh Reddy is a British physician-scientist. He completed the MB/PhD program at the University of Cambridge where he received a PhD from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. He previously was a Wellcome Trust Senior Fellow in Clinical ...

at the Institute for Metabolic Science at the

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. During this time, O’Neill contributed to a number of papers on non-transcriptional mechanisms of circadian timekeeping, most notably a letter and an article in same edition of ''Nature'' showing that transcriptional cycles are not essential for circadian rhythms in human and algal cells, which have been cited over 700 and 400 times respectively, according to

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. These observations were subsequently independently replicated and extended but were considered controversial at the time since transcriptional feedback repression had been thought essential for circadian rhythms in eukaryotes. O'Neill was awarded a Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellowship in 2011 and in 2013 was recruited to become an independent group leader in the Cell Biology Division of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. In 2016, he was awarded an EMBO Young Investigator Prize. In collaboration with Cairn Research, O'Neill pioneered the development of the ALLIGATOR for long-term

bioluminescence Bioluminescence is the emission of light during a chemiluminescence reaction by living organisms. Bioluminescence occurs in multifarious organisms ranging from marine vertebrates and invertebrates, as well as in some Fungus, fungi, microorgani ...

imaging.

Current Research

The O'Neill group’s research is focused on the evolution and mechanisms of circadian timekeeping in eukaryotic cells, and how biological clocks regulate cellular function to impact upon human health and disease. In a 2019 paper, published in the journal ''

Cell Cell most often refers to: * Cell (biology), the functional basic unit of life * Cellphone, a phone connected to a cellular network * Clandestine cell, a penetration-resistant form of a secret or outlawed organization * Electrochemical cell, a de ...

,'' the group identified

insulin Insulin (, from Latin ''insula'', 'island') is a peptide hormone produced by beta cells of the pancreatic islets encoded in humans by the insulin (''INS)'' gene. It is the main Anabolism, anabolic hormone of the body. It regulates the metabol ...

as a primary signal synchronizing mammalian circadian rhythms with feeding time. In 2017, the lab also demonstrated that cell-autonomous circadian regulation of

actin Actin is a family of globular multi-functional proteins that form microfilaments in the cytoskeleton, and the thin filaments in muscle fibrils. It is found in essentially all eukaryotic cells, where it may be present at a concentration of ...

dynamics in

fibroblast A fibroblast is a type of cell (biology), biological cell typically with a spindle shape that synthesizes the extracellular matrix and collagen, produces the structural framework (Stroma (tissue), stroma) for animal Tissue (biology), tissues, and ...

and other skin cells leads to differences in

cell migration Cell migration is a central process in the development and maintenance of multicellular organisms. Tissue formation during embryogenesis, embryonic development, wound healing and immune system, immune responses all require the orchestrated movemen ...

during wound healing that depend on the biological time of day that the wound was incurred. These findings predicted the striking 40% difference in the number of days that human burn injuries required to heal which they subsequently identified. Most recently, the O'Neill lab has been working to determine the basis for understanding metabolic oscillations in yeast.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:ONeill, John S 1979 births Alumni of New College, Oxford Alumni of King's College, Cambridge British molecular biologists People from Doncaster Living people Fellows of St John's College, Cambridge