Dr Danny Arends

Associate Professor

School: Geography and Natural Sciences

Dr Arends is an Associate Professor in Bioinformatics within the Department of Applied Sciences at Northumbria. He graduated from the University of Groningen with a BSc in Lifescience and Technology, a MSc in Molecular Biology, and a PhD in Bioinformatics in 2014.

Prior to joining Northumbria University, Dr Arends completed his postdoctoral research in Professor Gudrun A. Brockmann her lab at the Humboldt University in Berlin working on development of Bioinformatics tools for the analysis and integration of biological datasets. During the COVID-19 pandemic he live-streamed his lectures (R programming & Bioinformatics) for MSc and PhD students on his YouTube channel.

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Research Themes and Scholarly Interests

Dr Arends develops novel analysis methodologies and creates (open source) software for use in (systems) biology research, such as the addition of Multiple QTL Mapping (MQM) into R/qtl. Furthermore, Dr Arends his interests are in the development of novel computational method to support day to day biological research.

The focus of his research is computational methods in quantitative trait locus (QTL) analysis, data visualizations, and integration of big data sets in a useful / comprehensive manner. Open-source software he developed can be found on Github.

Key Publications

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Dynamics of genetic and somatic trade-offs in ageing and mortality, Arends, D., Ashbrook, D., Roy, S., Lu, L., Sloan, Z., Centeno, A., Lamour, K., de Magalhães, J., Prins, P., Broman, K., Sen, S., Mitchell, S., MacArthur, M., Akin, Ö., Li, X., Bajwa, A., Diaz, V., Harrison, D., Strong, R., Nelson, J., Mozhui, K., Auwerx, J., Williams, E., Miller, R., Williams, R. 22 Apr 2026, In: Nature
R/qtl: high-throughput multiple QTL mapping, Arends, D., Prins, P., Jansen, R., Broman, K. 1 Oct 2010, In: Bioinformatics
A platform for experimental precision medicine: The extended BXD mouse family, Ashbrook, D., Arends, D., Prins, P., Mulligan, M., Roy, S., Williams, E., Lutz, C., Valenzuela, A., Bohl, C., Ingels, J., McCarty, M., Centeno, A., Hager, R., Auwerx, J., Lu, L., Williams, R. 17 Mar 2021, In: Cell Systems
Transmission distortion and genetic incompatibilities between alleles in a multigenerational mouse advanced intercross line, Arends, D., Kärst, S., Heise, S., Korkuc, P., Hesse, D., Brockmann, G. 4 Jan 2022, In: Genetics

Professional Activity

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Other: Invited Blog: Building a Local LLM Agent in D 2026
Participating in a conference, workshop, ...: Northumbria University - Undergraduate Open Day 2025
Publication Peer-review: Nature (Journal) 2025
Publication Peer-review: Nature (Journal) 2024
Other: YouTube livestream: Principal Component Analysis 2024
Other: YouTube livestream: Enrichment Analysis 2024
Participating in a conference, workshop, ...: Northumbria University - Experience day 2024
Other: Interview: Why Study Bioinformatics? 2023
Other: YouTube livestream: Setting up a local Large Language Model (LLM) 2023
Invited talk: Genetic modulation of lifespan and post-reproductive longevity in heterogeneous mice 2023