Carlos Bustamante
Professor, University of California, Berkeley, USA
Carlos Bustamante is a Professor, University of California, Berkeley, USA
Carlos. Bustamante is a professor of Molecular and Cell Biology, Physics, and Chemistry, and the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Chair of Biophysics at University of California, Berkeley. Carlos’ work has involved the development of the field of single molecule force spectroscopy. His laboratory was the first to grab and extend a single molecule of DNA to mechanically characterize its elasticity. Later his laboratory did the same with the mechanical unfolding of a single protein molecule. These initial experiments generated a series of single molecule enzyme-based assays that have been successfully used by his laboratory and by others to study replication, transcription, translation, and genome packaging at the single molecule level.
To perform these studies, his laboratory designs and builds specialized high-resolution optical tweezers instruments some of them endowed with single molecule fluorescence capabilities.
Currently, the Bustamante laboratory is investigating the physical basis of transcription regulation by the nucleosomal barrier and the factors that affect the magnitude of this barrier as part of a mechanism of control of gene expression. The Bustamante laboratory is also interested in the process of protein folding and, more specifically, the co- translational folding of nascent polypeptides.
Carlos Bustamante is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.