IDPs and ISPs Benefit from Munger Recruit

Joshua Munger Ph.D.

Earlier this year, Joshua Munger, Ph.D., joined the faculty as an assistant professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics, using his expertise in cell metabolism and metabolomics to help further work in several signature programs of the Strategic Plan.

Munger earned his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 2001, and stayed on at Chicago to train as a post-doctoral fellow for an additional year in the lab of Bernard Roizman, one of the world’s foremost experts on the herpes simplex virus and how it invades human cells. Before coming to Rochester, Munger worked as a post-doctoral fellow at Princeton University in the lab of Thomas Shenk, a leading expert in cytomegaloviruses. Click here to review complete CV.

Munger's work looks at how infection with human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) changes metabolism in human cells in a bid to develop potential anti-viral therapeutic targets, a key goal of the Immunology and Infectious Disease IDP. His lab routinely uses drug discovery technologies like liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry to measure the concentrations and turnover of metabolites involved in numerous metabolic processes, including lipid synthesis, glycolysis and the citric acid cycle.

Metabolomics, another focus of Munger’s research, fits squarely with the Genomics and Systems Biology ISP. This newer discipline aims to provide insight into the function of metabolic networks, a key component of pathology in many disease processes.

“Metabolomics is an up-and-coming area because several key biological processes can only be figured out with a deep understanding of metabolism in the cells affected," said Dirk Bohmann, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Biomedical Genetics and chair of the Genomics and Systems Biology ISP. “Cancer cells, for instance, have a very different metabolism than healthy cells. Metabolism is also vitally important to the process by which stem cells change into other cells. It says a lot about the value of Josh’s work that it is making a profound contribution to an already formidable research effort underway here.