Sanford Leuba

 

Assistant Professor, Department of Cell Biology and Physiology

2.26g Hillman Cancer Center

412-623-7788, 4840(fax)

leuba@pitt.edu

http://www.cbp.pitt.edu/faculty/leuba/index.html

 

 

Sanford Leuba’s research uses an interdisciplinary approach combining the disciplines of molecular biology, biochemistry, engineering, and physics to try to understand at the single nucleosome and single chromatin fiber level how chromatin structure and dynamics regulate biological processes that use DNA as a template.  To this end, they are applying several single-molecule approaches such as AFM, magnetic tweezers, optical tweezers and single-pair fluorescence resonance energy transfer (spFRET) to native or reconstituted chromatin fibers of different protein compositions with the latter three methods using homebuilt instrumentation.  Single-molecule techniques provide the sensitivity to detect and to elucidate small, yet physiologically relevant, changes in chromatin structure and dynamics.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nucleosome labeled with donor and acceptor fluorophores for spFRET. This placement of the dyes should result in no spFRET on the linear DNA fragment and high-efficiency energy transfer in the nucleosome.  Figure courtesy of J. Harp.