Darren Martin is an associate professor in the Division of Computational Biology, Department of Integrative Biomedical Sciences, and is a member of the Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine (IDM), Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Cape Town.

Martin’s main research interests lie in studying the role that genetic recombination plays during virus evolution. As a mechanism that generates virus sequence diversity, recombination can participate in the evolution of enhanced pathogenicity, drug resistance, and vaccine escape. Using computational recombination-analysis tools developed at the IDM, his group investigates the underlying causes of recombination hot- and cold-spots within the genomes of all currently described virus families. With a focus on combining computational and wet-lab experimental approaches, Martin’s group tests hypotheses relating to genetic recombination, the evolution of genome-scale secondary structures, and fitness trade-offs. For example, the group has shown that obligatory maintenance of the delicate network of co-evolved intra-genomic interactions that define the biology of virus species severely limits the types of recombination events that are tolerable in nature. By demarcating the sub-genome modules that are and are not tolerably exchanged between viruses, recombination hot and cold spot maps should be applicable to the rational design of "recombination resistant" vaccines and drugs against viruses such as HIV and Hepatitis C. Such maps should also be applicable to the identification of genome regions that interact with one another.