Daniel E. Goldberg

Biosketch

Daniel Goldberg is a parasitologist who researches the biology of malaria. His studies on Plasmodium falciparum proteases and metabolic processes have defined pathways for nutrient acquisition, protein export, parasite egress and host cell invasion. This has led to the identification of multiple therapeutic targets. Goldberg was born in New York City and grew up in Chicago and Boston. He obtained a degree in biochemistry from Harvard College and did undergraduate research with Eugene Kennedy. He then did his MD/PhD in the MSTP program at Washington University; his doctoral dissertation was with Stuart Kornfeld. Subsequently Goldberg did an internal medicine residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, an Infectious Diseases fellowship at Washington University and a postdoctoral fellowship at Rockefeller University with Anthony Cerami. He joined the faculty at Washington University in 1990. Goldberg was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator for 20 years, directed the Washington University MSTP program for 10 years, and was co-director of the Infectious Diseases Division there for 19 years. He was a director of the Biology of Parasitism course at Marine Biological Laboratories for 5 years.

Research Interests

Daniel Goldberg's laboratory studies the biology of malaria. Intraerythrocytic malaria parasites are fascinating creatures that have evolved many clever strategies for survival inside their host cell. Most of these adaptations are still biological mysteries. The Goldberg lab focuses on identifying new antimalarial chemotherapeutic targets, defining the pathways of protein export and of parasite egress, and understanding the function of exported effector proteins involved in the pathogenesis of malaria. The function of proteases in these pathways is of particular interest. A favorite effector protein is histidine-rich protein II, a heme-binding protein that they have found causes endothelial barrier breakdown and vascular leakage. They are also trying to elucidate the function of the asparagine-rich proteome of Plasmodium falciparum.