Ronald J. Patterson

Ronald Patterson is an emeritus professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at Michigan State University. He received his PhD from Northwestern University Medical School where he studied intracellular growth of Mycobacterium tuberculosis under the tutelage of Guy Youmans. He discovered lymphocytes from immune mice secreted a substance that when added to macrophages from unimmunized mice resulted in inhibition of intracellular mycobacterial growth.

His postdoctoral training under Brian McCarthy at the University of Washington turned to the molecular aspects of determining the number of antibody genes via mRNA hybridization techniques when this was a major question in molecular genetics.

After this entry into mRNA biology, Dr Patterson took a position at Michigan State in the Department of Microbiology and studied the regulation of mRNA transport from nuclei using an in vitro isolated nuclei system. His group validated this model showing that introns of immunoglobulin genes are retained in nuclei while exons are transported.

Following a sabbatical with Thoru Pederson investigating mRNA splicing, he returned to Michigan State and initiated a long term collaboration with John Wang establishing the essential role of galectin-1 and -3 in pre-mRNA splicing. As this paper demonstrates, gal-3 is recruited to the assembling spliceosome through its association with U1 snRNP.