Jacob Gordon

Jacob Gordon, a native of Stokes County, North Carolina, graduated with university and departmental honors from Appalachian State University in 2018 with a B.S. in Biology. He conducted undergraduate research in the laboratory of Dr. Chishimba N. Mowa for three years. This research investigated the hypothesis that mechanical forces of the growing fetus on the female cervix direct mechano-sensitive cell signaling (mechanotransduction) in cervix tissue remodeling during pregnancy. Jacob’s published undergraduate work showed that certain mechano-sensitive molecules involved in cytoskeletal organization, tissue remodeling, and cell proliferation are dynamically expressed in murine cervix epithelia as pregnancy advances from early to late stages. These three years were formative in Jacob’s passion for research discovery and exploration in the context of human health and disease.

Upon concluding his undergraduate education, Jacob joined the NIH laboratory of Dr. Robin E. Stanley at the NIEHS in Research Triangle Park, NC as a Post-baccalaureate Fellow. For two years, he learned to pursue an integrative experimental approach utilizing biochemistry, structural biophysics, and molecular/cell biology to study pre-ribosomal RNA processing enzymes involved in building the eukaryotic ribosome. He contributed to two published works that uncovered the subcellular spatial regulation and functional catalytic motif elements of an essential pre-ribosomal RNA processing complex in eukaryotes, RNase-PNK. It was during these two years that Jacob became interested in the molecular machines that construct the ribosome, along with the mysterious class of diseases (known as ribosomopathies) that are associated with aberrant ribosome assembly/function in humans.

As an NIH Cambridge Scholar, Jacob is continuing his work on human molecular machines involved in ribosome assembly in the lab of Dr. Stanley at NIEHS. His co-mentor will be Professor Alan J. Warren at the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research, where Jacob will begin to study structural and functional mechanisms of mutant enzyme machinery identified in specific ribosomopathies. Jacob plans to ultimately pursue a career in academic medicine.