‘Yes, that is certainly about right. I hunt for a Actual physical understanding of biological devices in a bottom-up way. I feel you can distinguish 3 strains of research in my group in the mean time. The main considerations chromosome framework: How would you obtain a metre-very long DNA polymer folded and organised in this kind of microscopic cell? We now have developed visualisation tactics that allow us to study how, by way of example, SMC proteins loop DNA (movie on Youtube) as a way to Make up chromosomes.
Our team scientific studies bacterial cell division and is aiming to represent a ‘bottom up biology’ in synthetic cells which can autonomously divide. Our key fascination lies in cell division, chromatin composition, and spatial Command.
[Laughs] ‘It was certainly an excellent danger! At the time, I was well knowledgeable that it could go Completely wrong Which I could come to be significantly less profitable, but I just dismissed that. Curiosity has often been my strongest driving force. And luckily everything labored out.’
Our get the job done was immediately adopted up by others, most notably by Phaedon Avouris and colleagues at IBM, who in October 1998 printed their results on transistors created from solitary- and multi-walled carbon nanotubes in Utilized Physics Letters.
2012, discovery that nucleoid occlusion underlies the accuracy of bacterial mobile division; and very first at any time review from the dynamics DNA supercoils and the invention of supercoil hopping
Experimental phase diagram of negatively supercoiled DNA calculated by magnetic tweezers and fluorescence,
Quite a few linked developments adopted, where by our team founded different transistor variants like single-electron transistors at space temperature and intramolecular nanotube junctions that acted as rectifying diodes, and coupled several transistors into modest proof-of-theory electronic circuits.
Example (one) of bending configurations in 3D simulations of DNA rods on nanopores. A portion of the membrane is demonstrated in grey, the rim on the pore is highlighted in red, in addition to a 3D rendering on the motion on the DNA rod is displayed.
In 1993, being a youthful and eager associate professor at Delft University of Technological know-how, I had originally centered the research attempts of my group on measuring the electrical conductance of one conducting-polymer molecule. Within two a long time, we experienced established a tool by which only one wire of the phthalocyaninepolysiloxane polymer was connected among two carefully spaced steel nanoelectrodes.
‘The fantastically subtle way in which elements in nature functionality under no circumstances ceases to amaze me. If we clear up the puzzle of how daily life came into becoming, I hope that my amazement for the complexity of development can have elevated and with it my awe with the greatness with the Creator.’
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1999, first measurement on the wavefunction of single molecular orbitals of carbon nanotubes; and discovery of kink heterojunctions of carbon nanotubes which gave decisive evidence for just a new Luttinger description of interacting electrons in nanotubes
Visualization of unstained DNA nanostructures with Superior in-concentration transmission electron microscopy procedures
The biophysicist ceesdekker.net from Delft – who has long been One of the more cited experts while in the Netherlands For several years – normally takes his duty to contribute to the rationalization and popularisation of his operate with the border of physics and biology incredibly critically and regularly seems during the media; Otherwise to discuss his work, then about the connection amongst science and his Christian faith.