Biophysical Society Newsletter - January 2015

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BIOPHYSICAL SOCIETY NEWSLETTER

2015

JANUARY

van Oijen’s decision to delve into a new subject so fully. “When Antoine first came to Harvard as a postdoc, he knew very little biology. Yet he set out to have a career in biophysics, and went out of his way to learn biology,” Xie says. “[He had a] lack of fear of venturing into new territories.” Van Oijen was hooked on biophysics and began working to develop single-molecule techniques to visualize DNA replication, a field of inquiry that continues to dominate his career to this day. Van Oijen went on to become an assistant profes- sor at Harvard Medical School, where he stayed for six years before moving back to the Netherlands. He then took a position as a full professor at the University of Groningen, heading up the Single- Molecule Biophysics Group at the Zernicke Insti- tute for Advanced Materials. His group focused on developing and using single-molecule biophysics techniques to study complex biological processes. “We’re using a variety of in vitro and in vivo single- molecule approaches to study how DNA replica- tion works in phage, bacterial, and eukaryotic sys- tems,” van Oijen states. “Next to this effort, we’re interested in viral fusion (how does a membrane- enveloped virus fuse its membrane with that of the target cell) and membrane transport (how do membrane transporters get small molecules from one side of the membrane to the other). We try to balance our efforts between methods development and the answering of mechanistic questions.” As a group leader at University of Groningen, van Oijen embraced serving as a mentor and advisor to his lab members. “My favorite thing about being a professor, advisor, and mentor is discussing data with people in the lab, brainstorming about de- signing the next experiment, and coming up with mechanistic explanations. One of the most reward- ing things is when a person from the lab walks into your office, overflowing with excitement, with a piece of cool data,” says van Oijen. He has the benefit of working in a truly interdisciplinary en- virnment with physicists, biologists, chemists, and computer engineers in his lab. “I feel privileged to continue learning from their expertise and back- grounds,” he shares.

As it is for many people, the biggest challenge in van Oijen’s career thus far has been manag- ing the two-body problem. “My wife is an academic as well, and as a family we have been strug- gling for a long time to find a situation and location in which both of us have professional po- sitions that fit our ambition lev- els and keep us motivated,” he explains. Recently, van Oijen’s wife was offered her dream job at the University of Wollongong in Australia, where van Oijen also has a close collaborator. “A

van Oijen enjoys astrophotography as a hobby. The image above and below are two of his photos.

wonderful opportunity was created for me as well, resulting in the solution for our dual-career problem,” he says. “Plus, it is in a very nice loca- tion, with a beach close by and a nice climate. I may finally learn to surf! In the end, it taught me a valuable lesson on the balancing of work and life.” This month, van Oijen is moving to Austra- lia to work at University of Wollongong in the School of Chemistry. In addition to his passion for biophysics, van Oijen enjoys flying, having recently earned his pilot’s li- cense. “It’s a wonderful mix of, on the one hand, the romanticism of being free and on the other, the very steep but satisfying learning curve one has to climb to master the complex set of skills needed to fly a plane and find your way through the skies,” he explains. Another of his passions is astrophotogra- phy, a hobby van Oijen first undertook as a child. “I picked [it] up again a few years ago. I spend too many nights outside with my telescope and CCD camera to take pictures of the night sky.” His col- league Karl Duderstadt is thankful that van Oijen chose a career in biophysics rather than pursuing these other passions full time. “His childhood dream was to be an astronaut. Fortunately for us,” Duderstadt says, “he became a physics professor and has remained satisfied flying planes in the sky over the Netherlands.”

Profilee-at-a Glance Institution University of Wollongong Area of Research Understanding how proteins work using single-molecule tools