About the author
Dean Jones is Professor of Medicine and Biochemistry, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, Georgia (USA). He is a biomedical research scientist and educator in redox biology and an active proponent of the nascent effort to sequence the human exposome. He is the Director of the Clinical Biomarkers Laboratory (Department of Medicine) and collaborates widely on applications of clinical metabolomics to human health and disease. Born in Hazard, Kentucky (USA) on September 13, 1949, Jones is a post-World War II baby boomer, third child of Steve and Regina Jones. He grew up in southern Indiana, just north of Louisville, Kentucky, and in Granite City, Illinois, a suburb of St Louis, Missouri. He was valedictorian of Granite City Senior High School in 1967 and received an Elks Club Scholarship, an Association of the U.S. Army Scholarship and an Illinois State Scholarship to attend the University of Illinois, Urbana. He studied chemistry and biochemistry, graduating with honors in 1971. He completed his Ph.D. in medical biochemistry at Oregon Health Sciences University, Portland, in 1976, studying the biochemistry of hypoxia under the direction of Professor Howard S. Mason. He was a National Science Foundation Fellow in nutritional biochemistry at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, with Professor James Gaylor from 1976-77. In 1977, he moved to Stockholm, Sweden to study metabolism and function of the antioxidant glutathione with Professor Sten Orrenius at the Karolinska Institute. In 1979, he joined the Department of Biochemistry under the direction of Professor Donald B. McCormick as part of an historic transition and expansion of scholarship at Emory University enabled by a major gift from Robert and George Woodruff. His pioneering research to map intracellular gradients of oxygen, hydrogen peroxide, ATP and pH in mammalian cells provided a foundation for later discovery of kinetic limitations in thiol/disulfide systems. The stable, non-equilibrium reactions of sulfur switches in proteins governs the functional organization of macromolecular networks in cells, elaborated together with Professor Helmut Sies in an article entitled, The Redox Code. The redox code provides central principles for an organism, defined by a genetic code, to organize bioenergetics, metabolism and macromolecular structure to utilize environmental resources and defend against environmental challenges. The redox code complements the genetic code in the molecular logic of life. Current research extends these concepts to practical approaches to understand human exposures and cumulative effects, termed the exposome, and develop understanding of exposure memory systems that impact healthy aging and chronic disease. His research has been supported by the National Institute of Health, Department of Defense, National Science Foundation, American Heart Association, American Institute for Cancer Research, Office of Naval Research, the Woodruff Foundation and the Georgia Research Alliance. In 1984, he received the Albert E Levy award for his research on underlying mechanisms contributing to oxygen gradients in cells. In 1997 he was a recipient of a Nobel fellowship to study apoptosis at the Karolinska Institute. He received the Oxygen Club of California Science and Humanity prize in 2008, the R. Wayne Alexander Excellence in Research Accomplishment Award in 2013, the Society of Toxicology Mechanistic Toxicology Career Achievement Award in 2014 and the Jarrow Health Sciences Prize in 2014. He has authored or co-authored more than 450 scientific papers and holds several patents related to his biomedical research. He is an active member of the Society of Toxicology and the Society for Free Radical Biology & Medicine. He is married and resides in the Atlanta area, enjoying family activities, hiking, birding, photography and plein air painting.