Monty Jones international agricultural research for development institutions. He began his career at the Rice Research station in Sierra Leone, where he worked as a breeder for 13 years. His international career started with the CGIAR as coordinator of the IITA/USAID Cameroon rice program from 1987 to 1990. In 1991, Jones moved to the West Africa Rice Development Association (WARDA) now known as AfricaRice Centre, to become its principal breeder. There, he led the team that successfully crossed the Asian and African rice species ("Oryza sativa" and "Oryza glaberrima"), producing the high-yield NERICA variety in collaboration with his fellow African scientists and
Helitron (biology) Helitron (biology) Helitrons are one of the three groups of eukaryotic class 2 transposable elements (TEs) so far described. They are the eukaryotic rolling-circle transposable elements which are hypothesized to transpose by a rolling circle replication mechanism via a single-stranded DNA intermediate. They were first discovered in plants ("Arabidopsis thaliana" and "Oryza sativa") and in the nematode "Caenorhabditis elegans", and now they have been identified in a diverse range of species, from protists to mammals. Helitrons make up a substantial fraction of many genomes where non-autonomous elements frequently outnumber the putative autonomous partner. Helitrons seem to have a major role