Joshua T. Mendell

Joshua T. Mendell is an American molecular biologist who is a professor of molecular biology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, where he is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. Before moving to UT Southwestern, Mendell was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute early career scientist at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. His molecular biology research examines microRNA (miRNA) regulation and function, with particular emphasis on miRNAs and cancer.

Training and career

Mendell began working in a molecular biology laboratory when he was a teenager and continued to perform laboratory research as an undergraduate at Cornell University. He graduated with a BA in 1996 and was a member of the Delta Phi fraternity. Mendell pursued a Ph.D. and M.D. at Johns Hopkins University, receiving the degrees in 2001 and 2003 respectively. He remained at Johns Hopkins as a faculty member before moving to University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in 2011.

Research

Mendell and members of his research group investigate post-transcriptional gene regulation. As a graduate student with Harry (Hal) Dietz at Johns Hopkins, Mendell researched how cells recognize and degrade messenger RNA molecules with early stop codons, a process known as nonsense mediated decay. Mendell's interest in RNA led him into the field of microRNA.

In 2005, Mendell reported in the journal Nature that a gene often mutated in cancer cells, c-Myc, influences the expression of several miRNAs encoded in a cluster on human chromosome 13.