Graham F. Hatfull

 

Professor, Department of Biological Sciences

376 Crawford Hall

412-624-6975, 4870(fax)

gfh+@pitt.edu

http://www.pitt.edu/~biohome/Dept/Frame/Faculty/hatfull.htm#Contact

 

 

Research in Hatfull’s laboratory focuses on nature’s own nanotechnological devices, bacteriophages.  These biological entities are viruses that infect bacterial hosts and represent superbly engineered machines that have been fine-tuned over billions of years of natural selection.  For engineering purposes, phages are ideal, in that they carry with them their own instructions for operation in their DNA.  Manipulation of these instructions can therefore generate machines that have modified purposes such as molecular construction at the nanomolecular scale.  Phages also encode machines for precise DNA rearrangements in a controllably reversible fashion, which could be used for trafficking molecules along a DNA-based transportation system.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image of  mycobacteriophage Bxb1: one of nature’s nanomachines.