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Daniel Laverty, assistant professor of chemistry headshot

Daniel Laverty

Assistant Professor

dal925@lehigh.edu
Education:

Ph.D. in Chemistry, Johns Hopkins University 2018

B.S. in Chemistry and Biology, Merrimack College 2013

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Additional Interests

  • Biochemistry
  • Chemical biology
  • Molecular biology
  • Precision cancer therapy
  • DNA damage and repair
  • Nucleic acid chemistry

Research Statement

The Laverty lab uses a combination of nucleic acid chemistry, biochemistry, and molecular biology to understand the mechanisms of DNA repair in human cells. The DNA in each of our cells is damaged thousands of times every day, threatening genome stability and organismal health. A suite of dedicated enzymes detects and repairs damaged DNA; however, these pathways can become dysregulated: In some individuals, DNA repair is inefficient, and fails to repair DNA damage, leading to mutations that increase cancer risk. In other cases, cancerous cells can hijack the DNA repair machinery to resist chemotherapy.

 We are broadly interested in three questions: 1) How do DNA repair and damage tolerance pathways maintain the stability of our genome in healthy individuals?  2) How are these pathways dysregulated in diseases including neurodegenerative disorders and cancer? and 3) How can we target DNA repair and damage tolerance pathways for novel precision therapies, especially for difficult-to-treat cancers such as glioblastoma?

 Answering these questions is complicated by the chemical and structural complexity of DNA damage: most DNA-damaging agents produce a spectrum of different lesions with differing chemical properties and biological consequences. To overcome this complexity, the Laverty lab combines biochemistry and molecular biology to study the repair of site-specific DNA lesions in live cells. This allows us to link individual DNA lesions or DNA repair pathways with specific biological outcomes. We are currently most interested in the repair of DNA double strand breaks—especially “complex” double strand breaks with different chemical modifications—and in gap-filling/translesion synthesis. We are seeking undergraduates, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows; please email Dr. Laverty if you are interested.

Biography

Dr. Laverty has spent his career at the intersection of chemistry and biology, first earning a B.S. in chemistry and biology from Merrimack College in North Andover, MA in 2013, then joining Marc Greenberg’s group at Johns Hopkins University for his graduate studies. In the Greenberg lab, he studied nucleic acid chemistry and the biochemistry of DNA repair enzymes. He completed his PhD in 2018 and then moved back to the Boston area for his postdoctoral fellowship in Zac Nagel’s lab at Harvard School of Public Health. In the Nagel lab, Dr. Laverty used his nucleic acid chemistry and biochemistry training to develop new assays for studying DNA repair in live cells, with a particular focus on the role of mutagenic repair pathways in glioblastoma treatment resistance. He joined the faculty at Lehigh in 2025.

The Laverty lab is seeking undergraduates, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows!

Selected Publications

Laverty, D. J.; Gupta, S. K.; Bradshaw, G, A.; Hunter, A. S.; Carlson, B. L.; Matias Calmo, N.; Chen, J.; Tian, S.; Sarkaria, J. N.; Nagel, Z. D. “ATM Inhibition Exploits Checkpoint Defects and ATM-Dependent Double Strand Break Repair in TP53-Mutant Glioblastoma.” Nature Communications 2024 15:5294

Laverty, D. J.; Mortimer, I. F.; Greenberg, M. M. “Mechanistic Insight Through Irreversible Inhibition: DNA Polymerase Theta Uses a Common Active Site for Polymerase and Lyase Activities.” Journal of The American Chemical Society 2018 140, 9034-9037

Laverty, D. J., Averill, A.; Doublié, S; Greenberg, M. M. “The A-Rule and Deletion Formation During Abasic and Oxidized Abasic Lesion Bypass by DNA Polymerase Theta.” ACS Chemical Biology 201712, 1584-1592.

 Laverty, D. J. and Greenberg, M. M “In Vitro Bypass of Thymidine Glycol by DNA Polymerase Theta Forms Sequence-Dependent Frameshift Mutations” Biochemistry. 2017 56, 6726-6733.

 For a complete list, see: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Daniel-Laverty

Teaching

Coming soon!