Halfway as a result of his occupation, Cees Dekker reinvented himself. After several years of hardcore physics, he shifted his concentrate to ‘nanobiology’ for the flip with the millennium. A term he coined himself, being a make any difference of truth.
Our group research bacterial cell division and is particularly aiming to represent a ‘bottom up biology’ in artificial cells which will autonomously divide. Our key fascination lies in cell division, chromatin structure, and spatial Command.
Multicolor imaging in the bacterial nucleoid and cell division proteins with blue, orange, and close to-infrared fluorescent proteins
Our get the job done was immediately adopted up by others, most notably by Phaedon Avouris and colleagues at IBM, who in Oct 1998 posted their conclusions on transistors made from single- and multi-walled carbon nanotubes in Used Physics Letters.
This yielded a breakthrough. Within just a few months, we had been ready to measure transportation by means of somebody single-walled carbon nanotube. Dependant on lower-temperature experiments by a superb PhD college student in my team, Sander Tans (now a valued colleague and professor at Delft University of Technology using an Lively investigation lab at AMOLF in Amsterdam), we confirmed that carbon nanotubes had been authentic quantum wires with extremely very long (micrometres) electronic coherence lengths — confirming theoretical predictions of metallic behaviour.
Inside the many years subsequent these discoveries, my study pursuits shifted to biophysics and nanobiology, And that i turned considerably less associated with the development of nanotube electronics. The main target of numerous researchers in the field also shifted to graphene (where by, funnily plenty of, the primary graphene ribbons have been described as ‘nanotubes that are Slice open along their size’) right after the discovery of The 2-dimensional materials in 2004.
What distinguishes biology from chemistry is always that these components jointly make up a living technique. The secret of explained life, I feel, lies in the interactions, the interaction of those molecules. The large dilemma regarding the origin of everyday living continues to be unanswered. How did we at any time evolve from simple molecules to the extremely sophisticated units we see right now? We do not know. I want to operate on These types of large, open up thoughts.’
2011, very first in vitro measurements of transport across only one biomimetic nuclear pore elaborate; improvement of multiplexed magnetic tweezers for kilo-molecule experiments; and resolved the system of homology recognition in DNA homologous recombination
Let's say, instead of working with traditional major-down silicon electronics, transistors may be constructed from The underside up utilizing one organic molecules as being the switching factors? This concept, which became The premise of right now’s industry of molecular electronics, very first emerged in the seventies.
But carbon nanotubes have remained a research topic of considerable desire to lots of. In truth, the outlook on applying carbon nanotubes to make realistic products, in parts which include radio-frequency electronics, electronic electronics and flexible electronics, remains bright.
[fourteen] In 2005 Dekker became involved ceesdekker with Netherlands-wide discussions about Clever Design and style, a motion that he has because Evidently distanced himself from. Dekker advocates that science and religion will not be in opposition but may be harmonized.
Mother nature Physics thanks the nameless reviewers for their contribution towards the peer evaluate of this function.
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Eventually, I'll briefly sketch many of our ideas to investigate the creating of artificial cells, exclusively our to start with steps to establish synthetic cell division.