David Dulin, Associate Professor at the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the Faculty of Science, has been awarded funding through NWO’s Open Technology Programme. With his project Next Generation Single-Molecule Biophysics, he is developing a new platform that aims to make advanced single-molecule techniques more accessible to researchers.
Human cells are full of tiny molecular machines that move, rotate and sometimes respond in unpredictable ways. Standard methods struggle to capture these processes in detail. Single-molecule techniques make it possible to follow and study these molecular machines one by one. This can provide important new insights for biology and medicine.
At the same time, these techniques are still complex and therefore not easily accessible to every laboratory. In this project, Dulin is developing a new platform that automates the collection and analysis of data using lab-on-a-chip and AI technology. This will allow researchers to work with advanced single-molecule techniques more quickly and easily.
“By automating how we collect and analyse data, we can carry out many more measurements and compare the results more reliably. This will give us a clearer understanding of what happens at the molecular scale inside living cells. In the long term, this approach could also help speed up the discovery and development of new medicines,” says Dulin.
The project aims to contribute to new insights into biological processes and to applications with societal impact, for example in the search for new treatments.
About the Open Technology Programme
Through the Open Technology Programme, NWO supports research into new technologies that can help address societal and scientific challenges. This year, NWO selected six promising research projects.