Most recently John was the Professor of Molecular Biology and NHMRC Australia Fellow at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, University of Queensland. John was educated at St Patrick’s College Strathfield, the University of Sydney and Monash University, where he obtained his PhD. He has subsequently worked at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, the CSIRO Division of Molecular Biology in Sydney, and the University of Queensland, where he was based from 1988-2011. He has also spent research periods at the Universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Cologne and Strasbourg. He was Foundation Director of the Australian Genome Research Facility and the Institute for Molecular Bioscience.

Education

1971 BSc (First Class Honours in Biochemistry), The University of Sydney

1977 PhD, Department of Biochemistry, Monash University, Melbourne

Awards and Honours

1989 Pharmacia-LKB Biotechnology Medal, Australian Biochemical Society

1997 Butland Visiting Professorship, The University of Auckland

2000 Eppendorf Achievement Award, Lorne Genome Conference

2000 Visiting Senior Research Fellowship, St. John’s College, Oxford

2001 Officer in the Order of Australia (AO)

2002 Honorary Fellowship of the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia (FRCPA)

2003 Australian Government Centenary Medal

2006 CSIRO Eureka Prize for Leadership in Science

2007 Associate Membership, European Molecular Biology Organization

2008 Inaugural Gutenberg Chair, University of Strasbourg

2008 Fellowship of the Australian Academy of Science

2009 Julian Wells Medal, Lorne Genome Society, 2009

2011 International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (IUBMB) Medal

2012 Chen Award for Distinguished Academic Achievements in Human Genetics & Genomic Research, Human Genome Organisation (HUGO)

Publications

Croft L, Schandorff S, Clark F, Burrage K, Arctander P and Mattick JS. ISIS, the intron information system, reveals the high frequency of alternative splicing in the human genome. Nature Genetics 2000; 24: 340-341.

Mattick JS. Noncoding RNAs: the architects of eukaryotic complexity. EMBO Reports 2001; 2: 986-991.

Bejerano G, Pheasant M, Makunin IV, Stephen S, Kent WJ, Mattick JS and Haussler D. Ultra-conserved elements in the human genome. Science 2004; 304: 1321-1325.

Mattick JS . The hidden genetic program of complex organisms. Scientific American 2004; 291(4): 60-67.

Mattick JS and Gagen MJ. Accelerating networks. Science 2005; 307: 856-858.

Ravasi T, Suzuki H, Pang KC, Katayama S, Furuno M, Okunishi R, Fukuda S, Ru K, Frith M, Gongora M, Grimmond S, Hume DA, Hayashizaki Y and Mattick JS. Experimental validation of the regulated expression of large numbers of noncoding RNAs from the mouse genome. Genome Research 2006; 16: 11-19.

Pheasant M and Mattick JS. Raising the estimate of functional human sequences. Genome Research 2007; 17: 1245-1253.

Mercer TR, Dinger ME, Sunkin SM, Mehler MF and Mattick JS. Specific expression of non-coding RNAs in mouse brain. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 2008; 105: 716-721.

Amaral PP, Dinger ME, Mercer TR and Mattick JS. The eukaryotic genome as an RNA machine. Science 2008; 319: 1787-1789.

Mattick JS and Mehler MF. RNA editing, DNA recoding and the evolution of human cognition. Trends in Neuroscience 2008; 31: 227-233.

Dinger ME, Amaral PP, Mercer TR, Pang KC, Bruce SJ, Gardiner BB, Askarian-Amiri ME, Ru K, Soldà G, Simons C, Sunkin SM, Crowe ML, Grimmond SM, Perkins AC and Mattick JS. Long noncoding RNAs in mouse embryonic stem cell pluripotency and differentiation. Genome Research 2008; 18: 1433–1445.

Taft RJ, Glazov EA, Cloonan N, Simons C, Stephen S, Faulkner GJ, Lassmann T, Forrest ARR, Grimmond SM, Schroder K, Irvine K, Hume DA, Suzuki H, Orlando V, Carninci P, Arakawa T, Nakamura M, Kubosaki A, Hayashida K, Kawazu C, Murata M, Nishiyori H, Fukuda S, Kawai J, Daub CO, Hayashizaki Y and Mattick JS. Tiny RNAs associated with transcription start sites in animals. Nature Genetics 2009; 41: 572-578.

Mattick JS. Deconstructing the dogma: a new view of the evolution and genetic programming of complex organisms. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 2009; 1178: 29-46.

Nahkuri S, Taft RJ and Mattick JS. Nucleosomes are preferentially positioned at exons in somatic and sperm cells. Cell Cycle 2009; 8: 3420-3424.

Taft RJ, Pang KC, Mercer TR, Dinger ME and Mattick JS. Noncoding RNAs: regulators of disease. Journal of Pathology 2010; 220: 126–139.

Mattick JS. RNA as the substrate for epigenome-environment interactions. Bioessays 2010; 32: 548–552.

Taft RJ, Simons C, Nahkuri S, Oey H, Korbie DJ, Mercer TR, Holst J, Ritchie W, Wong JJ-L, Rasko JEJ, Rokhsar DS, Degnan BM and Mattick JS. Nuclear-localized tiny RNAs are associated with transcription initiation and splice sites in metazoans. Nature Structural and Molecular Biology 2010; 17: 1030-1034.

Mattick JS. The central role of RNA in human development and cognition. FEBS Letters 2011; 585: 1600–1616.

Mercer TR, Neph S, Dinger ME, Crawford J, Smith MA, Shearwood AJ, Haugen E, Bracken CP, Rackham O, Stamatoyannopoulos JA, Filopovska A and Mattick JS. The human mitochondrial transcriptome. Cell 2011; 146: 645-658.

Mercer TR, Gerhardt DJ, Dinger ME, Crawford J, Trapnell C, Jeddeloh JA*, Mattick JS* and Rinn JL* (*Joint corresponding authors). RNA Capture-Seq resolves the deep complexity of the human transcriptome. Nature Biotechnology 2012; 30: 99-104.