Conference in French: There’s more room at the bottom: towards a universal detector of molecular interactions
by Terence STRICK
9 September 2019 - 9 September 2019
Paris, France
Abstract:
For several decades now biophysical tools have allowed scientists to manipulate and observe in real-time biological reactions taking place at the scale of individual reagent molecules. Equipped with a resolving power that literally reaches the angstrom-to-nanometre scale inhabited by single chemical bonds and molecules, the field of “single-molecule biophysics,” as it has come to be known, has since provided biologists and physicists with unprecedented insights into how biological molecular motors and machines assemble, function, and disassemble to allow our cells to live and operate correctly. In this talk we will provide a historical overview of the field and illustrate how it has altered our understanding of molecular and cellular structure, function and organization, for instance in key processes such as gene expression and repair. These insights have, in turn, allowed us to turn a new eye towards biomaterials and begin to assemble them in novel ways to generate useful new functionalities and measurements. We illustrate this through the development of a new class of molecular detectors with applications in drug screening, characterization, and refinement.
References:
J. Wang, C. Duboc, Q. Wu, T. Ochi, S. Liang, S.E. Tsutakawa, S.P. Lees-Miller, M. Nadal, J.A. Tainer, T.L Blundell and T.R. Strick
Dissection of DNA double-strand break repair using novel single-molecule forceps.
Nature Struct. Mol. Biol., 25: 482—487 (2018).
J. Fan, M. Leroux-Coyau, N.J. Savery and T.R. Strick
Reconstruction of bacterial transcription-coupled repair at single-molecule resolution
Nature 536: 234—237 (2016).
E.T. Graves, C. Duboc, J. Fan, F. Stransky, M. Leroux-Coyau and T.R. Strick
A dynamic DNA-repair complex observed by correlative single-molecule nanomanipulation and fluorescence.
Nature Struct. Mol. Biol. 22: 452—457 (2015).
A. Revyakin, C.-Y. Liu, R.H. Ebright and T.R. Strick
Abortive initiation and productive initiation by RNA polymerase involve DNA scrunching.
Science 314: 1139—1143 (2006).
For several decades now biophysical tools have allowed scientists to manipulate and observe in real-time biological reactions taking place at the scale of individual reagent molecules. Equipped with a resolving power that literally reaches the angstrom-to-nanometre scale inhabited by single chemical bonds and molecules, the field of “single-molecule biophysics,” as it has come to be known, has since provided biologists and physicists with unprecedented insights into how biological molecular motors and machines assemble, function, and disassemble to allow our cells to live and operate correctly. In this talk we will provide a historical overview of the field and illustrate how it has altered our understanding of molecular and cellular structure, function and organization, for instance in key processes such as gene expression and repair. These insights have, in turn, allowed us to turn a new eye towards biomaterials and begin to assemble them in novel ways to generate useful new functionalities and measurements. We illustrate this through the development of a new class of molecular detectors with applications in drug screening, characterization, and refinement.
References:
J. Wang, C. Duboc, Q. Wu, T. Ochi, S. Liang, S.E. Tsutakawa, S.P. Lees-Miller, M. Nadal, J.A. Tainer, T.L Blundell and T.R. Strick
Dissection of DNA double-strand break repair using novel single-molecule forceps.
Nature Struct. Mol. Biol., 25: 482—487 (2018).
J. Fan, M. Leroux-Coyau, N.J. Savery and T.R. Strick
Reconstruction of bacterial transcription-coupled repair at single-molecule resolution
Nature 536: 234—237 (2016).
E.T. Graves, C. Duboc, J. Fan, F. Stransky, M. Leroux-Coyau and T.R. Strick
A dynamic DNA-repair complex observed by correlative single-molecule nanomanipulation and fluorescence.
Nature Struct. Mol. Biol. 22: 452—457 (2015).
A. Revyakin, C.-Y. Liu, R.H. Ebright and T.R. Strick
Abortive initiation and productive initiation by RNA polymerase involve DNA scrunching.
Science 314: 1139—1143 (2006).
Keywords
single molecule biophysics, gene expression, gene repair