Dr Dann Turner

About the speaker

Dr Dann Turner

Dann is a Senior Lecturer in Genomics at the University of the West of England, Bristol. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Manchester, and his MSc in Medical Microbiology from UWE, Bristol. Prior undertaking his PhD, he was the technical development manager at Alaska Food Diagnostics, a UK Ministry of Defence spin-out company developing a bacteriophage-based rapid diagnostic assay for the detection of foodborne pathogens between 2005 and 2009, where he developed a passion for this fascinating group of viruses.

In 2020 he was appointed as Vice Chair for the Bacterial Viruses Subcommittee for the International Committee on the Taxonomy of Viruses and as Chair for the Caudoviricetes and Autographiviridae Study Groups. Alongside Dr Evelien Adrianessens, he has been involved in the effort to reclassify tailed bacteriophages according to a genome-based taxonomy that encompasses sequences derived from metagenomic approaches. He is involved in the design and development of bioinformatics tools for the classification and analysis of bacterial viruses using genomic data. He was the associate editor for the MDPI journal Viruses from 2018 to 2022. In 2023 he was appointed to the advisory board of the Innovate UK KTN Phage Innovation Network.

His research encompasses characterisation and bioinformatics analysis of virulent and temperate bacteriophages that infect the WHO priority critical pathogen Acinetobacter baumannii with specific focus on the molecular mechanisms underlying bacteriophage infection.