Dr Darren Soanes

About me:

After graduating from Oxford, Darren trained to be a science teacher and then spent four years teaching at a secondary school in Eastbourne. Darren moved to Exeter in 1996, where he completed an M.Sc. before studying for a Ph.D. with Professor Nick Talbot entitled “Regulation of the pathogenicity gene MPG1 in the rice blast fungus Magnaporthe grisea”.

Darren stayed in Professor Talbot’s group as a research fellow where he specialised in bioinformatics. Darren worked on several projects involving comparative genomics of fungal phytopathogens, as well as transcriptional regulation in Magnaporthe grisea. Darren spent a year working for the Exeter Sequencing Service before moving to the Complex Disease Epigenetics Group in 2019, working under the supervision of Professor Katie Lunnon.

In 2023, Darren joined the NIHR Exeter Biomedical Research Centre as a bioinformatician within the neurodegeneration theme.

Darren has had many years’ experience of using sequence data to answer biological questions. In the first part of his career, he studied the comparative genomics and transcriptomics of fungal phytopathogens. His current research is in the area of neurodegeneration.

His most recent project involved analysing transcriptomic data, sequenced from patient blood samples, to identify genes that may be important in the progression from mild cognitive impairment to Alzheimer’s disease and the role of inflammation in this process. He is now looking at how long-read sequence data produced by Oxford Nanopore can be used to study patterns of epigenetic modification in a number of neurodegenerative diseases.

• B.A. Biochemistry – (1991, University of Oxford)
• P.G.C.E. Secondary Science – (1992, University of Sussex)
• M.Sc. Biological Research Methods – (1997, University of Exeter)
• Ph.D. Molecular Genetics – (2000, University of Exeter)