Ilan Davis


Professor Ilan Davis is a Professor of Spatial Molecular Biology, University of Glasgow. From 2007 to 2023 was a professor of Cell Biology and Wellcome Investigator at the Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford. Previously he was a Professor and Wellcome Trust Senior Fellow at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell Biology, University of Edinburgh. In 2011, he was elected as an EMBO Journal|EMBO] fellow.

Education

Davis studied Natural Sciences at King’s College, Cambridge, earning a BA in 1986. He then went on to complete a DPhil in Developmental Biology in 1990 under the supervision of David Ish-Horowicz at the Department of Zoology at University of Oxford. Davis completed postdoctoral research from 1992 to 1995 at the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of California, [San Francisco|UCSF], in Patrick H. O'Farrell’s laboratory, with a Nato SERC postdoctoral fellowship followed by a Boyer postdoctoral Fellowship.

Research

His work focuses on the mechanism of mRNA transport and localised translation in the Drosophila nervous system.
Davis previously held, as the principal applicant, a Wellcome Career Development Fellowship, Lister Senior Fellowship, three Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellowships, two Wellcome Trust Strategic Awards, MRC grant for Nanoscopy Oxford and currently a Wellcome Investigator Award.

Selected publications

  • Gala, D. S., Titlow, J. S., Teodoro, R. O., & Davis, I.. Far from home: the role of glial mRNA localization in synaptic plasticity. RNA, 29, 153-169.
  • Titlow, J. S., Kiourlappou, M., Palanca, A., Lee, J. Y., Gala, D. S., Ennis, D.,... & Davis, I.. Systematic analysis of YFP gene traps reveals common discordance between mRNA and protein across the nervous system. bioRxiv, 2022-03.
  • Lee, J. Y., Wing, P. A., Gala, D. S., Noerenberg, M., Järvelin, A. I., Titlow, J.,... & Davis, I.. Absolute quantitation of individual SARS-CoV-2 RNA molecules provides a new paradigm for infection dynamics and variant differences. Elife, 11, e74153.
  • Gala, D. S., Lee, J. Y., Kiourlappou, M. S., Titlow, J. S., Teodoro, R. O., & Davis, I.. Mammalian glial protrusion transcriptomes predict localization of Drosophila glial transcripts required for synaptic plasticity. bioRxiv, 2022-11.
  • Wickenhagen, A., Sugrue, E., Lytras, S., Kuchi, S., Noerenberg, M., Turnbull, M. L.,... & Wilson, S. J.. A prenylated dsRNA sensor protects against severe COVID-19. Science, 374, eabj3624.