University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Alan Jones is Professor of Biology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His expertise is signal transduction with emphasis on plant cells. He introduced the genetic model Arabidopsis to the G protein field in 2001 with two high impact papers showing the role of G signaling within a biological context (Science 292:2066 and Science 292:2070). Remarkably, even after 30 years of G protein research by the time those two papers were published, all G protein research had been done with cells (on plastic) or yeast; there was no good multicellular context to place the function of G proteins. The knock-out mouse was not yet routine by 2001 therefore the rationalization was to use Arabidopsis, particularly since the G protein repertoire was vastly simpler than in the mouse. Two major discoveries came soon after. The JonesLab discovered that plants had a self-activating G protein (PNAS 104:17317) and a receptor RGS (Science 301: 1728).