Notable awards Royal Society | Name Jonathan G. | |
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Born Jonathan Dallas George Jones 14 July 1954 (age 70) ( 1954-07-14 ) Institutions Harvard UniversitySainsbury LaboratoryUniversity of East Anglia Thesis Repeated DNA sequences in rye (Secale cereale), wheat (Triticum aestivum) and their relatives (1980) Organizations founded Mendel Biotechnology, Inc. Doctoral advisor | ||
Jonathan Dallas George Jones FRS (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.
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Education
Jones was educated at the University of Cambridge, graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in Natural Sciences from Peterhouse, Cambridge in 1976 and a PhD in 1980, under the direction of G Dover and Richard B. Flavell. After graduating he conducted postdoctoral research at Harvard in Frederick M. Ausubel's lab.
Research
Jones, along with collaborator Jeffery Dangl, proposed the "zig-zag 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.
With George Coupland, Liam Dolan, 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, Professor Jones contributed an opinion piece to BBC News Online, outlining his stance on 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'.
Career
Jones has been Head of the Sainsbury Laboratory from 1994 to 1997 and 2003 – 2009. He is also a Professor at University of East Anglia and has been an editor of The Plant Cell and Genome Biology. Other positions he has held include: