Samir M. Hamdan

Current position: Assistant professor of biology at the division of chemical, life sciences and engineering for King Abdullah University of Science and Technology

Education: Ph.D. in biochemistry from the Australian National University in 2002

Nonscientific interests: Reading (particularly history), soccer, and listening to classical music from all over the world

My general research goal is to understand the molecular mechanisms involved in DNA replication. Toward achieving this goal, I use biochemical, biophysical, and structural tools and combine them with real-time observation of enzymatic activity by single-molecule techniques. This multidisciplinary approach is a result of my Ph.D. training at the Australian National University, in the laboratory of professor Nicholas Dixon, and my postdocotoral training at Harvard Medical School, in the laboratories of professors Charles Richardson and Antoine van Oijen. In these laboratories, I have extensively studied DNA replication mediated by two prokaryotic replisomes, those of Escherichia coli and its bacteriophage T7.

Armed with these comprehensive multidisciplinary tools, I am aspiring in my laboratory at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology to tackle complex biological reactions at the single-molecule level. Single-molecule imaging has evolved rapidly and already has proved its novelty in studying the activity of a variety of individual enzymes. However, biological reactions are driven by a series of orchestrated steps that are carried out by large, multi-protein complexes, often containing many enzymatic activities. Therefore, an important future direction for single-molecule biophysics is to study these large protein complexes.

Read Hamdan's article on page 18979.

Antoine M. van Oijen

Current position: Professor of molecular microscopy and spectroscopy at the Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials, University of Groningen, The Netherlands

Education: Ph.D. in physics from Leiden University, The Netherlands, in 2001

After obtaining my Ph.D. in physics in 2001 from the University of Leiden, in The Netherlands, I moved to the chemistry department at Harvard University for postdoctoral research in single-molecule biophysics. In 2004, I started my independent career at Harvard Medical School, and, in 2010, I moved to the University of Groningen, in The Netherlands, as a full professor. My group at the Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials is interested in developing and using single-molecule techniques to study a variety of biological processes. We are interested in understanding how DNA is replicated by the multi-protein replisome machinery, how transcription factors find their target sites, and how enveloped viruses fuse their membrane with that of a target cell.

Read van Oijen's article on page 18979.