Royal Society Fellowship for Professor Andrew Jackson

Professor Andrew Jackson, clinical geneticist and Programme Leader at the MRC Human Genetics Unit, has been elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society: April 2020

More than 60 exceptional scientists from around the world have been elected as Fellows and Foreign Members of the Royal Society this April, selected for their outstanding contributions to scientific understanding.

This prestigious achievement is in recognition of Professor Jackson’s exemplary work demonstrating how studying human genetic diseases can shed light on fundamental biological mechanisms.

He has revealed that reduced brain and body size results when the processes that control DNA replication, cell division or genome stability are perturbed.

Through his discovery that mutation of Ribonuclease H2 causes an inflammatory disorder, Professor Jackson revealed that embedded ribonucleotides are the most common error in the mammalian genome and that ruptured micronuclei resulting from genome instability trigger an innate immune response.

Professor Jackson is an academic lead for the University of Edinburgh and NHS Lothian COVID-19 testing centre at the MRC Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medicine (IGMM).

He is also Deputy Chair of the Medical Research Council Molecular and Cellular Medicine Board.

This honour is a well-deserved recognition, not only of Andrew’s own standing as a world-leading scientist himself, but also is a reflection of Andrew’s fantastic research team.

At this time of global crisis, the importance of scientific thinking, and the medicines, technologies and insights it delivers, has never been clearer. Our Fellows and Foreign Members are central to the mission of the Royal Society, to use science for the benefit of humanity.

Links:

• 2020 Elections to the Royal Society - https://royalsociety.org/news/2020/04/outstanding-scientists-elected-as-fellows-and-foreign-members-of-the-royal-society/
• Andrew Jackson Research Group
• Professor Andrew Jackson – Research Profile - https://www.ed.ac.uk/profile/andrew-jackson