Jason Rasgon

Jason Rasgon

Professor of Entomology and Disease Epidemiology in the Department of Entomology

Dr. Jason Rasgon came to Penn State in 2011 from Johns Hopkins University. He was promoted to Professor in 2017. His research focuses on disease vectoring arthropods, which examines the effects of individual genes all the way up to metapopulation-level processes. His work integrates molecular tools and techniques, population biology, ecology, and theory to address fundamental and applied questions related to the genetics and ecology of vector arthropods and the pathogens they transmit.

He has used a variety of theoretical, ecological and molecular techniques to build one of the most integrative and diverse vector genetics programs in the country. Dr. Rasgon has become an internationally recognized expert on mosquito genetic manipulation, CRISPR, arthropod symbionts, mosquito densoviruses and viral transduction systems, mosquito population genetics, arbovirology, bedbugs, genetically modified organisms, and vector epidemiology, with projects spanning the gamut from mathematical modeling of disease control strategies, population genetics, insect symbionts, insect water channels, tick-borne pathogens, and development of novel methods for transgenic manipulation.

The results of his research have been broadly disseminated across more than 130 manuscripts in high-impact journals such as Nature, PLoS Pathogens, PLoS Medicine, PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

His research program is currently supported by over $11 million in external funding from the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation. His total career funding (with collaborators) now exceeds $45 million from the NIH, NSF, United States Department of Agriculture, Department of Defense, Gates Foundation, and private industry.

Dr. Rasgon and his lab are pushing the boundaries of genome editing to address limitations of applying CRISPR/Cas9 to make it essentially “open source,” that is cheap to implement, rapid, easy to use in any system, and within the capabilities of any laboratory processing basic molecular biology expertise. His patent-pending technology called Receptor Mediated Ovary Transduction of Cargo or “ReMOT Control” was awarded a very rare “Creativity Extension” from the NSF to extend this technology from arthropods to vertebrate systems for basic and therapeutic applications. 

He is also an excellent collaborator. Besides collaborating with a multitude of colleagues at Penn State, he has active international collaborations with scientists in eight countries (India, Japan, Germany, Italy, Nigeria, South Africa, Thailand, and Myanmar) in addition to collaboration with researchers at many US institutions, he has hosted visiting scientists from Nigeria, India and Japan.