Principal Scientist at theSchool of Life Sciences at Tsinghua University.
An expert in acombination of structural and functional approaches to resolving structures of RNA molecules and identify their functions and is a biologist who expanded into using dynamic single-molecule biophysics techniques toinvestigate the free energy related to RNA conformational changes.
“With the help of LUMICKS, my student started using this equipment after about 30 minutes of training [and] was quickly able to generate lots of data from it. I feel like this is going to be a very exciting tool in my lab that can help us to answer many important questions we have.”
Chair of the Physics Department and Group Leader of the Williams lab at Northeastern University
An expert in single-molecule biophysics, specializing in the development of single-molecule methods for quantitatively probing the biophysical properties of DNA and RNA.
“Forces allow you to provide a perturbation to the system to get it to do things it does only rarely and understand the whole energy landscape of the interaction you’re trying to study [as well as] how that extrapolates back to zero force.”
Expert in Molecular Biophysics at the University of Kent
Dr. Kad’s labuses single-molecule techniques to understand the physical basis of how proteins interact with a primary focus onDNA repair, muscle contraction, and neurodegenerative diseases.
“The combination of force and single-molecule fluorescence, in an easy-to-use system will accelerate experiments that take days to just take minutes. Making complex tools easier to use, will make ours and the scientific community’s science move faster.”
Group leader at TU Delft.
An expert in multidisciplinary approaches tostudy the mechanics and dynamics of cells and tissues.
“We use [single-molecule techniques] to look at mechanical properties at the molecular level, which we correlate to mechanics at the cellular level.”
Group leader and Professor of Physics of Living Systems at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
An expert in protein structural dynamics, with a focus in single-molecule biophysics.
“I think that single-molecule has really [taught] us how molecular machines work, that has been the biggest breakthrough.”
Professor of Molecular Biophysics, University of Zurich.
An expert in single-molecule spectroscopy of protein folding, disorder, and dynamics.
“The user-friendly software combined with the high throughput experimental workflow and the dedicated training we received from LUMICKS, has fully equipped us to perform state-of-the-art single-molecule force spectroscopy experiments in no time.”
Research Director and Group Leader at the Protein Structure and Function program at Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research (CPR) at the University of Copenhagen.
An expert instructural molecular biology, particularly in proteins.
“Using single-molecule [techniques], you can see the different conformations of molecules, the complementation of these techniques can help us to understand these intermediated states, which is essential to understanding the protein complexes.”
Distinguished Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at the University of California at Davis.
An expert in biochemistry and the molecular biology of DNA repair and hom*ologous recombination.
“The optical tweezers enable easy manipulation of single-DNA molecules [and] single-protein complexes on those DNA molecules.”
Group leader at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
An expert inthe physics of life processes.
“The combination of fluorescence with optical tweezers is one of the biggest steps [forward], it allows studying the most complex interactions between protein and DNA.”
Group leader at the University of British Columbia.
An expert inbiophysical chemistry, biomaterials, single-molecule studies, and polymer chemistry.
“We use single-molecule force spectroscopy with optical tweezers, these two complementary techniques allow us to explore forces from a few piconewtons to a few hundred piconewtons.”
Senior vice-president at Artios Pharma Ltd and senior group leader at the Francis Crick Institute in London.
An expert in DNA repair and the treatment of cancer resulting from DNA damage.
“I think applications like [single-molecule approaches] will become more mainstream in terms of understanding DNA transaction-based reactions and how small molecules interfere with that.”
Principal Investigator at the Centro Nacional de Biotecnología
Dr. Moreno-Herrero is an expert in DNA repair, organization, and replication. Hehas participated in 22 research projects, being the principal investigator in 13 of them, including an ERC Starting Grant 2007, an ERC Proof of Concept Grant 2014, and an ERC Consolidator Grant 2015.
“With the C-Trap, our group can expand our capabilities to investigate nucleic acid mechanics and DNA-protein interactions in novel ways, [we] can now locate fluorescently-labeled proteins on DNA substrates and follow their dynamics in real-time.”
Principal investigator at the University of Groningen.
“We will be able to use microfluidics to study function-related dynamics of a single molecule under different experimental conditions. Combined with the power of having a simultaneous mechanical and fluorescent readout, we will be able to uncover previously unexplored details of the conformational cycles of our model proteins.”
Senior Lecturer atTel Aviv University.
An expert in biochemical engineering andchemistry,interested in life processes that involve deformation and remodeling of membranes, such as viral infection, cell-cell fusion in fertilization, and secretion of neurotransmitters by exocytosis.
“With such quantitative measurements, we hope to contribute to the understanding of biological processes in which membrane remodeling plays a central role.”
Assistant Professor at Vanderbilt University.
An expert in cytoskeletal structure. His workfocuses on understanding the mechanochemistry of protein complexes within the nuclear envelope important for converting forces felt by the cell into biochemically meaningful outputs such as the activation of gene transcription and chromosome positioning.
“The m-Trap and Bluelake software have allowed my lab to get started immediately on experiments due to a user-friendly interface and technical support from LUMICKS. We are excited to use this technology to decipher how the nucleus senses and uses mechanical force.”
Group Leader at theFOM Institute AMOLF.
An expert in cellular and molecular biophysics. His labstudies the dynamics of single proteins and cells using novel experimental approaches at the molecular level.
“We use the C-Trap to directly measure the multidimensional effects of mechanical forces in protein (un)folding, enabled by the combination of single-molecule fluorescence with optical tweezers. These findings provide insights into the mechanisms by which chaperones act to control protein conformations and folding to the native state.”
Director and Research Group Leader at the MPI-CBG.
Prof. Grill’s group has focusedon the physical principles and concepts that underly the dynamic self-organization of living matter, beingprimarily interested in the mechanisms by which structure and form arise in living systems.
“The correlation of force traces with fluorescence observation provides very powerful insights for our research. The team has been fighting over system time!”
Graduate Fellow at the lab of Shixin Liu, Rockefeller University.
John is an experienced user and a recent winner of a dynamic single-molecule scripting competition, in which he wrote a data visualization GUI for the C-Trap.
“Through Harbor, I can help the community with ready-to-go scripts, while getting credit for the work I’ve done through extra citations.”
Group Leader at the NIH – National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.
Dr. Neuman’s single-molecule biophysics lab is focused on answering fundamental questions concerning enzyme function and regulation.
”By allowing us to manipulate the topology of DNA molecules while simultaneously imaging the DNA and DNA binding proteins with high spatial and temporal resolution, the C-Trap will open up exciting new avenues of research in the Neuman lab.”
Professor at the London Institute of Medical Sciences.
The group of Prof. Aragón research is focused on the function of the three eukaryotic SMC complexes; cohesin, condensing, and Smc5/6. They investigate structural maintenance of chromosomes (SMC) complexes, which are sophisticated machines capable of remodelling chromosome architecture during the essential processes of the cell cycle.
“C-Trap is a unique and powerful tool that helped us unravel precise molecular mechanisms on how cohesin tethers chromatids. By using the shared instrument located at the Imperial College London together with our collaborators, we were able to perform valuable measurements and build the data presented in our publication* in a few weeks of measurements.”
Professor and group leader at the University of Liege.
Prof. Duwez has a background in chemistry and nanoscience and has researched methods to interface single small functional molecules and synthetic molecules with atomic force microscopy. Her group’s methods have previously been limited to static measurements but, with the addition of the m-Trap, they can now measure minute dynamic structural changes in DNA/RNA G-quadruplexes and manipulate them in real-time.
“We believe that the great force resolution and time stability of the m-Trap will be precious assets for us to depict crucial information about the mechanics and work processes of biological and artificial molecular machines”, stated Dr. Damien Sluysmans, a researcher in the Duwez group”
Professor at the University of Copenhagen.
Professor Bendix and numerous other investigators, including Prof. Hickson, Prof. Berg-Sorensen, Prof. Nylandsted, andProf. Stamou,have acquired the C-Trap to found the new Center for Optical Bio-Manipulation (COBM) at Niels Bohr Institute.The core groups plan to study a wide variety of single-molecule applications including genome stability and chromosome segregation, and membrane protein dynamics. The teams will also head into uncharted territory using the C-Trap to investigate nanoscience applications such as the interactions of gold nanoparticles with cell membranes, and stress sensing proteins inside cells.
“The new system will bring more collaborators and new research ideas from different life science groups, who are interested in optical and single-molecule biomanipulation. Having the C-Trap together with optical expertise in the group will serve the local research environment with state-of-the-art equipment and highly trained experts.”
Professor at the University of Cambridge, Department of Biochemistry.
Prof. Pellegrini’s group wants to understand how our cells execute the orderly duplication of the genome at the molecular level and how they cope with DNA damage. They aim to achieve their goal by working out the 3D shape of the protein complexes responsible for the duplication process, then using this information to explain their mechanism of action in atomic detail.
“We are extremely pleased to have received the generous support of the BBSRC (grant ref.MR/S021248/1) that enabled us to provide the University of Cambridge with a state-of-the-art single-molecule instrument that was not previously available to the Cambridge community of researchers. We are looking forward to the many novel insights that the C-trap will provide.”
Professor of Physicsat Ohio State University.
“The C-Trap is already having a significant impact on biomolecular, mechanobiology, and bioengineering efforts at OSU. This is due to both the versatility and the ease of use of the instrument. Within 2 months of the installation, three different labs are already collecting data for NIH-funded projects. In addition, the instrument has been used to provide preliminary data for a new grant proposal. I have been impressed by the range of labs that plan to use the instrument. This includes labs from departments in a number of colleges including Arts & Sciences, Engineering, Medicine, Pharmacy, and even Food, Agriculture, and Environmental Sciences. Because of this, I anticipate that the C-Trap will have a significant impact on research labs throughout OSU.”
Assistant Professor at Rockefeller University and head of the Laboratory of Nanoscale Biophysics and Biochemistry.
An expert in nanoscale biophysics and biochemistry.
“Just as impressive as the craftsmanship of the instrument is the professional and timely customer support that LUMICKS has provided us on a regular basis over the past years. The relationship between the LUMICKS team and my team is more of a collaborative nature, which is unique and what I find most enjoyable.”
