 His later work in this area has been focused on the role of microRNAs in the evolution of pesticide resistance.Pittendrigh was the lead author on the White Paper that was funded by NIH for the sequencing of the body louse genome.Subsequently, he served as the director and community coordinator of the Body Louse Genome Sequencing Consortium, a group of over 60 scientists that worked to develop an understanding of the annotation and interpretation of the body louse genome sequence and the genome of the obligate endosymbiont that lives in the body louse.