Dr. Desplan started his training at École Normale Supérieure in Saint-Cloud, France where he achieved ‘agregation’ in 1975.  He did his Ph.D. at INSERM, Paris with Drs. Moukhtar and Thomasset on calcium regulation before joining Pat O’Farrell’s lab at UCSF. This is where he initiated his studies of the homeodomain and demonstrated that this conserved signature of many developmental genes was a DNA binding motif.

In 1987, he joined the Faculty of Rockefeller University and was also appointed Howard Hughes investigator. He pursued structural studies of the homeodomain and began his work on the evolution of axis formation in insects. In 1997, he embarked into the investigation of color vision in Drosophila, which occupies most of his current research activities.

He moved to become Professor at New York University in 1999.

His team has described the molecular mechanisms of patterning underlying color vision in the fly retina. He is now studying the processing of color vision by investigating the functional anatomy of the medulla portion of the optic lobe.

His lab has also developed the wasp Nasonia as a model system for comparing early developmental events in the embryo (Evo-Devo). He has contributed extensively to the understanding of how insect embryos pattern their antero-posterior axis; insect embryos use many of the same genes that are function in Drosophila but with significant differences in the network, in particular mRNA localization.