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Biography

BSc in Biology, Uppsala University, Sweden (2006).

PhD. (2007-2012). Karolinska Institutet, Sweden. Studied brain regeneration in the Red-spotted Newt with Professor András Simon.

Postdoctoral Fellow. The Institute of Cell Engineering, School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA. (2012-2017). Studied adult neurogenesis under the supervision of Professor Hongjun Song (Funded by EMBO Long-Term Fellowships and Swedish research council international postdoc scholarship).  

Research Associate, The Department of Neuroscience, Perelman School of Medicine, The University of Pennsylvania. (2017-2020). Continued to work with Professor Hongjun Song and studied the embryonic origin of the adult neural stem cells. 

Research Overview

Daniel Berg received his biology undergraduate degree from Uppsala University in his hometown Uppsala, Sweden. For his PhD, he joined the lab of Dr. András Simon at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, where he studied adult neurogenesis, i.e. the generation of functional neurons in the adult brain, using the Red-spotted Newt as a model organism. Unlike mammals, many amphibians are able to regenerate body parts, including their brain, after injury.  In his PhD work, Daniel identified the neural stem cells that fuel regeneration in the newt brain and examined signaling pathways that control the proliferation of these stem cells.

The dentate gyrus of mouse hippocampus at postnatal day 7, blue is nuclei marker, green is progeny of HOPX-expressing progenitor cells, and red is marker of cell proliferation.

Daniel then joined the lab of Dr. Hongjun Song, first at the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore and then at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia as a postdoctoral fellow. In the Song lab Daniel studied adult neurogenesis in the mouse brain and attempted to identify the different types of neural stem cells that reside in the adult mammalian brain. He also examined the developmental origin of the adult neural stem cells. 

Neural stem cells in the Dentate gyrus labeled at different stages of development.

As a lecturer at The Institute of Medical Sciences, Daniel plans to study neural stem cells, both during development and in adulthood using mammalian and amphibian model systems. The overall aim of his research will be to identify mechanisms to activate endogenous neural stem cells to repair the brain after injury and disease. He will use techniques such as lineage tracing, in vivo genetic manipulation and single cell RNA-sequencing. 

Collaborations

Dr Eunchai Kang, 51cg.

Professor Bettina Platt, 51cg.

Dr Cyrus David Mintz, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA.