Yann Chemla
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, IL·Biophysics
Every cell has to pull apart the two strands of its DNA to copy it, read it or repair it. Helicases are the molecular machines that do this unwinding.
- Fields
Biophysics
Biochemistry
Physics
- Topics
DNA helicases
helicase regulation
UvrD
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Feb 2027
What they work on
- Determine how contacts with DNA and non-canonical DNA structures control the unwinding activity of the UvrD, Rep and XPD helicases, using optical tweezers combined with fluorescence microscopy.
- Quantify how accessory proteins regulate helicases, including partners that recruit and activate them and competitors for the same DNA, combining single-molecule measurements with biochemistry.
- Link the shape changes of helicases seen in single-molecule experiments to atomic-level structural models using computational biophysics.
More about the research
If they unwind DNA at the wrong time, the genome can be damaged, so their activity must be tightly controlled. Many helicases also take on several different jobs, which raises a puzzle: how does a cell switch on the right job in the right context? Faulty helicases are linked to human diseases and cancer.
Why it matters
Defective helicases are implicated in several human disorders and in cancer. Clarifying how cells switch these DNA-repair enzymes on and off adds basic understanding of genome maintenance. That understanding could eventually help explain how helicase failures lead to disease. The project's new single-molecule methods may also aid studies of other moving biomolecules.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Yongli Zhang
Yale University, CT·Biophysics
Reconstitute the full primed SNARE complex, adding complexin and the calcium sensor synaptotagmin-1 to Munc18-1, syntaxin-1, VAMP2 and Munc13-1, and characterize its stability, structure and dynamics on membranes.
E. Ostap
University of Pennsylvania, PA·Biophysics
Determine the structural basis of myosin force sensing by testing conserved residues that tune tension sensitivity in Myo1b and Myo1c, using engineered motors, microsecond optical trapping and cryo-EM.
Gheorghe Chistol
Stanford University, CA·Biochemistry·Early-career
Build a quantitative, real-time picture of how DNA replication starts at origins, using a single-molecule imaging platform that tracks individual replication proteins as they bind DNA.
The school
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign: 41 labs on PI Pages, $907M a year on research, 870 research doctorates a year.
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