Daniela Rhodes

Daniela Rhodes

Daniela Rhodes FRS is a distinguished structural and molecular biologist. She was a senior scientist at the world-renowned MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, where she read for her Ph.D under the supervision of Nobel laureate Aaron Klug. Continuing her work under the tutelage of Aaron Klug at Cambridge, she was appointed Group Leader in 1983, obtained tenure in 1987 and was promoted to Senior Scientist in 1994 (equivalent to Full Professor). Subsequently, she served as Director of Studies between 2003-2006. She has also been Visiting Professor at both “La Sapienza” in Rome, Italy and the Rockefeller University in NY, USA.

Daniela Rhodes has made many fundamental contributions to understanding the structure and function of nucleic acids and their biologically important interactions with many different proteins. Her work combines biochemical analyses with direct structural determination. She determined the structures of a number of important protein-DNA complexes involved in transcription, such as zinc-fingers and nuclear hormone receptors. She has provided some of the first structural information on telomeric proteins, such as yeast Rap1p and human TRF1 and TRF2 and their complexes with DNA. Throughout her career she has made many contributions to the understanding of chromatin structure and function. She was involved in determining the structure of the nucleosome core particle, has worked on transcriptionally active chromatin and more recently on the higher order 30nm structure of chromatin. Her research continues to focus on understanding how the structure of chromatin is involved in transcriptional regulation and how telomeres are involved in preserving chromosome integrity.

She joined the School of Biological Sciences at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), in Singapore, as professor in September 2011.