Biophysical Society Bulletin | April 2026

B i oApnhnyus iacli sMt ei ne tPi nr ogf i l e

Daniel J. Deredge Area of Research

Institution University of Maryland School of Pharmacy

Application of structural protein mass spectrometry tools integrated with computational chemistry approaches to address biophysical questions

At-a-Glance

Daniel J. Deredge , Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the Univer sity of Maryland School of Pharmacy, recalls feeling inspired as a student in science class, an early spark that has since grown into his career in structural biology. “I still remember my fascination the first time I encountered concepts like the genetic code, the central dogma of gene expression, and the idea that a protein’s sequence encodes its structure, and that structure determines function,” he shares. “These concepts were very impactful and inspiring to me.” Now, Deredge integrates exper imental and computational tools to understand how proteins move and why those movements matter for human disease.

Daniel J. Deredge

Daniel J. Deredge was born in France and spent many of his formative years in Ethiopia, also with time spent in other countries including the United States. “All this travel gave me an early appreciation for cultural diversity and adaptability,” he says. “Growing up across different environments shaped both my worldview and my comfort with navigating new endeav ors, something that turns out to be very useful in interdisci plinary, collaborative science.” Neither of his parents were scientists, but both worked in academia and education. That household environment nor malized academia, which might have otherwise seemed like a distant world. “Growing up, I frequently heard conversations about teaching, academic concerns, and institutions, which, in hindsight, made academia feel like a natural environment rather than a distant objective,” Deredge reflects. “They instilled in me a deep respect for education and curiosity, and perhaps just as importantly, a comfort with academic life that made pursuing a research career feel less intimidating and more like a continuation of something familiar.” His scientific journey formally started at Louisiana State Uni versity (LSU), where he earned both his Bachelor of Science degree and PhD in Biochemistry. He explains, “A first real crossroads came when I was choosing a lab for graduate studies. I had the opportunity to join two broadly different research groups, and I ultimately chose the Licata lab at LSU. That decision proved foundational. The science and the intellectual culture of constant curiosity and rigor truly set me on this path.” His decision to join Vince Licata ’s lab for his graduate studies proved pivotal. “In the Licata lab, the pursuit of quantitative, physics-based, and thermodynamic principles to explain biological phenomena, combined with a culture of constant scientific curiosity, was both highly stimulating and deeply rewarding,” he says. His doctoral research focused on protein-DNA interactions, and he became deeply interested in

the ways molecular recognition and conformational dynamics govern biological function. His graduate research experience sparked a broader fascination with structural mechanism and macromolecular flexibility. Postdoctoral training at Case Western Reserve University, in Patrick Wintrode ’s lab, introduced Deredge to the experi mental technique that would define his independent career: hydrogen-deuterium exchange mass spectrometry (HDX-MS). The method measures how readily the hydrogen atoms in a protein’s backbone exchange with the surrounding sol vent—a readout of how open, flexible, or protected different regions of the protein are. “It felt like finding the right experi mental tool for the question: how do proteins move, and why does it matter?” he says. “The ability to experimentally probe conformational dynamics in solution was transformative for me. That curiosity ultimately evolved into my current work in tegrating HDX-MS with computational modeling and applying those approaches to complex systems like the Dengue virus NS5 protein.” However, HDX-MS has its limits. It provides information at the level of peptide segments, not individual atoms. During his postdoctoral years, which also included time at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, Deredge began working to bridge that gap. “HDX-MS provides peptide-level information about protein flexibility, while simulations give atomistic detail,” he explains. “Integrating both, if done right, provides the best of both worlds.” That insight became the cornerstone of his research program: combining experimental HDX-MS with molecular dynamics simulations to make protein dynamics not just observable, but quantitatively interpretable. Today, Deredge’s lab at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy works at the intersection of structural mass spectrometry, computational modeling, and translational

April 2026

6

THE NEWSLETTER OF THE BIOPHYSICAL SOCIETY