Lab website: https://www.nat.vu.nl/~erwinp
Erwin Peterman is interested in understanding how life works at the fundamental, single-molecule level. With his experiments he strives to provide quantitative insights in life processes that can be rigorously tested using physical models. To this end, he applies a multidisciplinary approach including elements from molecular and cellular biology, biochemistry, statistical physics and optics. The techniques used in his lab are (single-molecule) fluorescence microscopy, fluorescence spectroscopy and optical tweezers.
Current research focuses on the cooperation of motor proteins in intracellular transport in C. elegans cilia, on the mechanics of DNA and DNA-processing proteins, on the dynamics of membrane proteins in living bacteria, and on the development of new instrumentation and approaches to study life at the single-molecule level.
