51cg

People

Professor Jonathan Pettitt

Professor Jonathan Pettitt
Professor Jonathan Pettitt
Professor Jonathan Pettitt

BSc (Hons) (1988; Imperial College, London) PhD (1992; University of Cambridge)

Personal Chair

51cg
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 51cg in 1996 where he became group leader and Lecturer in genetics within the newly built Institute of Medical Sciences.

Research

Research Overview

Professor Jonathan Pettitt studies the mechanistic basis of specific RNA processing events using the nematode C. elegans as a model organism (). 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

View Research Area

Research Specialisms

  • Genetics

Our research specialisms are based on the Higher Education Classification of Subjects (HECoS) which is , published under the licence.

Funding and Grants

BBSRC (2020 - 2023). Understanding the mechanism of a nematode molecular Achilles' heel.

Teaching

Programmes

Courses

Publications

Page 1 of 5 Results 1 to 10 of 42

  • Cap-adjacent 2′-O-ribose methylation of RNA in C. elegans is required for postembryonic growth and germline development in the presence of the decapping exonuclease EOL-1

    Clemens, E., Brivio, S., Al-Khafaji, M. I., Eijlers, P., Kurukulasuriya, M. S., Haussmann, I. U., MacLeod, D., Wenzel, M., Muller, B., Soller, M., Pettitt, J.
    Nucleic Acids Research, vol. 54, no. 8, gkag355
    Contributions to Journals: Articles
    • [ONLINE] DOI:
    • [OPEN ACCESS]

  • The protein-protein interaction between two spliced leader trans-splicing factors is mediated by two interlinked α-helical domains

    Eijlers, P., Pettitt, J., Müller, B.
    microPublication Biology, vol. 2025, 001705
    Contributions to Journals: Articles
    • [ONLINE]
    • [ONLINE] DOI:
    • [OPEN ACCESS]

  • Cap-adjacent 2’-O-ribose methylation of RNA in C. elegans is required for postembryonic growth and germline development in the presence of the decapping exonuclease EOL-1

    Clemens, E., Brivo, S., Al-Khafaji, M. I., Eijlers, P., Kurukulasuriya, M. S., Haussmann, I. U., MacLeod, D., Wenzel, M., Muller, B., Soller, M., Pettitt, J.
    Working Papers: Preprint Papers
    • [ONLINE] DOI:

  • A nematode-specific ribonucleoprotein complex mediates interactions between the major nematode spliced leader snRNP and its target pre-mRNAs

    Eijlers, P., Al-Khafaji, M. I., Soto Martin, E., Fasimoye, R. Y., Stead, D., Wenzel, M., Muller, B., Pettitt, J.
    Nucleic Acids Research, vol. 52, no. 12, pp. 7245-7260
    Contributions to Journals: Articles
    • [ONLINE] DOI:
    • [OPEN ACCESS]
    • [ONLINE]

  • Both trust in, and polarization of trust in, relevant sciences have increased through the COVID-19 pandemic

    Radrizzani, S., Fonseca, C., Woollard, A., Pettitt, J., Hurst, L. D.
    PloS ONE, vol. 18, no. 3, pp. e0278169
    Contributions to Journals: Articles
    • [ONLINE] DOI:
    • [OPEN ACCESS]

  • #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
    Contributions to Journals: Articles
    • [ONLINE] DOI:
    • [ONLINE]

  • People with more extreme attitudes towards science have self-confidence in their understanding of science, even if this is not justified

    Fonseca, C., Pettitt, J., Woollard, A., Rutherford, A., Bickmore, W., Ferguson-Smith, A., Hurst, L. D.
    PLoS Biology, vol. 21, no. 1, e3001915
    Contributions to Journals: Articles
    • [ONLINE] DOI:
    • [OPEN ACCESS]

  • 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.
    Current Biology, vol. 32, no. 23, pp. 5189-5199
    Contributions to Journals: Articles
    • [ONLINE] DOI:
    • [OPEN ACCESS]

  • 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
    Contributions to Journals: Articles
    • [ONLINE] DOI:
    • [OPEN ACCESS]
    • [ONLINE]

  • SLIDR and SLOPPR: flexible identification of spliced leader trans-splicing and prediction of eukaryotic operons from RNA-Seq data

    Wenzel, M., Muller, B., Pettitt, J.
    BMC Bioinformatics, vol. 22, 140
    Contributions to Journals: Articles
    • [ONLINE] DOI:
    • [OPEN ACCESS]
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