Professor Patrick Chinnery FRS FMedSci

Patrick Chinnery is Professor of Neurogenetics and a Wellcome Senior Fellow at the University of Newcastle. His field is mitochondrial disease where he has shown that 1 in 200 individuals harbour pathogenic mtDNA mutations and mitochondrial disorders affects about 1 in 5000 people – both far more common than was previously recognised. He has shown that a drastic reduction of mtDNA content during early embryonic development plays a major role in determining the clinical phenotype. From a broader perspective, he has implicated mitochondrial mechanisms in diabetes mellitus and Parkinson’s disease, and shown that natural genetic variation in mtDNA influences survival during severe infection.