Jonathan Flint is a British behavior geneticist and

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professor ...

in Residence in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the

David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine—known as the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA (DGSOM)—is an accredited medical school located in Los Angeles, California, United States. The school was renamed in 2001 in h ...

. He is also a senior scientist in the Center for Neurobehavioral Genetics at UCLA's Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior.

Career and research

Flint is known for his research on the genetics of complex traits in mice and

major depressive disorder Major depressive disorder (MDD), also known as clinical depression, is a mental disorder characterized by at least two weeks of pervasive low mood, low self-esteem, and loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities. Introdu ...

in humans. In 2015, he and his colleagues published a study that was the first to link two genetic variants to this disorder. In 2016, he left his post as director of the

Psychiatric Genetics Psychiatric genetics is a subfield of behavioral neurogenetics and behavioral genetics which studies the role of genetics in the development of mental disorders (such as alcoholism, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and autism). The basic principle ...

Group at the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the world's second-oldest university in contin ...

Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics Wellcome () is a supermarket chain owned by British conglomerate Jardine Matheson Holdings via its DFI Retail Group subsidiary. The Wellcome supermarket chain is one of the two largest supermarket chains in Hong Kong, the other being Parkn ...

to join UCLA. Upon doing so, he became one of four directors of UCLA's Depression Grand Challenge, which aims to conduct a study of 100,000 people to search for genetic risk factors for depression. This study is intended to be the largest genetic study of a disorder ever conducted in humans. He serves on the

editorial board The editorial board is a group of experts, usually at a publication, who dictate the tone and direction the publication's editorial policy will take. Mass media At a newspaper, the editorial board usually consists of the editorial page editor, ...

for the journal ''

Current Biology ''Current Biology'' is a biweekly peer-reviewed scientific journal that covers all areas of biology, especially molecular biology, cell biology, genetics, neurobiology, ecology, and evolutionary biology. The journal includes research articles, va ...

''.

Awards and honours

Flint received

The Genetics Society The Genetics Society is a British learned society. It was founded by William Bateson and Edith Rebecca Saunders in 1919 and celebrated its centenary year in 2019. It is therefore one of the oldest learned societies devoted to genetics. Its membe ...

's Medal in 2014. He was elected a

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathematic ...

(FRS) in 2019.

References

External links

* British geneticists Living people David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA faculty Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellows Population geneticists Academics of the University of Oxford Year of birth missing (living people) Psychiatric geneticists British psychiatrists Fellows of the Royal Society {{UK-psychiatrist-stub