Patricia Jean Johnson

Research and career After her PhD, Johnson was a postdoctoral researcher with Piet Borst at the Netherlands Cancer Institute. She studied the parasite Trypanosoma brucei, the parasite that causes African trypanosomiasis.

Johnson studies the molecular and cell biology of Trichomonas vaginalis, a parasite that causes trichomoniasis, one of the most prevalent sexually transmitted infections worldwide. Johnson cloned the first Trichomonas vaginalis gene in 1990. She first sequenced the genome of Trichomonas vaginalis in 2007, She investigates the pathogenic mechanisms that permit Trichomonas vaginalis to establish infection. Johnson studies different aspects of trichomonad biology, including drug resistance, organelle biogenesis, gene expression, genomics and host-parasite interactions. In 2014 she found that Trichomonas vaginalis secreted a protein that can invade benign cancerous prostate cells.

Awards and honours 2004 National Institutes of Health (NIH) MERIT Award 2011 Elected to the American Society for Microbiology