Alan R. Davidson PhD

Alan Davidson is a Professor at the University of Toronto. He first discovered the beauty and elegance of phages during my Ph.D. studies, which focused on the DNA packaging enzyme of E. coliphage lambda. During his post-doctoral work at MIT, He switched to the field of protein structure and folding. His laboratory at the University of Toronto has operated since 1995. His work has covered the areas of protein folding, protein-protein interactions, structural biology, and phage biology. His research is currently focused solely on phages and, studies how phages work, and how can exploit phage-derived entities for applications in human health. He also studies anti-CRISPRs, which are phage-encoded inhibitors of CRISPR-Cas systems. He discovered these proteins and is currently endeavoring to understand how they work, and how they can be exploited in the genome editing application. His group combines expertise in phage biology, structural biology, in vitro biochemistry, and bioinformatics, allowing us to address questions through a multi-disciplinary approach.