Professor Daniel P. Depledge, PhD, Professor of Systems Biology of Viruses within the German Centre for Infection Research (DZIF) since June 2021 is a new member of RESIST. “The opportunity to expand my research interests and engage in translational research led me to move from New York to Hannover to join the Institute of Virology at Hannover Medical School (MHH). Here I look forward to collaborating closely with many excellent virologists, RNA biologists and immunologists, while continuing to build new collaborations across Europe,” says the 40-year-old.
Professor Depledge investigates how herpesviruses survive and spread in people’s bodies. To do this, he and his team apply computational biology, molecular biology and genomics/transcriptomics approaches to diverse model systems. “We want to identify and characterize key host and viral gene products that govern herpesviruses latency and reactivation across diverse cell types,” he explains. In addition, he and his team explore the role of epitranscriptomic modifications on host and viral RNAs in regulating the outcome of infections.
After obtaining a PhD in Molecular Parasitology at the University of York in the UK, Daniel Depledge decided to switch fields and began working on Herpesviruses – as a Postdoc in Professor Judith Breuer’s laboratory at University College London, UK. Here he developed a new methodology for capturing and sequencing viral genomes directly from clinical samples. A subsequent grant from the Medical Research Foundation New Investigator Award enabled him to focus his studies on the latency of the herpes viruses Varicella-Zoster (VZV) and Herpes Simplex (HSV-1). To further these studies, he subsequently joined Professor Ian Mohr’s lab at the New York University School of Medicine, USA, where he also established his own lab group as an Assistant Professor.