Jonathan Alan Hodgkin is a British biochemist. He is the Professor of Genetics at the University of Oxford and an emeritus fellow of Keble College, Oxford.
Jonathan Alan Hodgkin (born 1949) is a British biochemist, Professor of Genetics at the University of Oxford and an emeritus fellow of Keble College, Oxford.
Education
Hodgkin was educated at the University of Oxford where he graduated in 1971. He was awarded a PhD from the University of Cambridge in 1974 for research on the genetics of the worm Caenorhabditis elegans.
Career and research
Hodgkin was a scientist at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. Hodgkin was one of the earliest researchers to explore the genetics of development in the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans. He first unraveled the genetic and maturational events in worm sex determination before extending his interest to other developmental pathways, behaviour and immunity.
Most Caenorhabditis elegans worms are self-fertilizing hermaphrodites, with two X chromosomes, but X0 males can also arise spontaneously, permitting genetic crosses. Hodgkin used genetic mutations in this tiny, fast-breeding species to define the regulatory cascade of genes that controls the development of male or hermaphrodite characteristics providing a model for approaching development in other species.
