Hello and welcome back to the newsletter! Feel free to hang out on the slack! We are also on twitter!

All the past podcasts and tutorials can be found here. Enjoy!

  1. Podcast with Dr. Eva Bertosin

1. Podcast with Dr. Eva Bertosin

In this episode, we chatted with Dr. Eva Bertosin about her work on building nanoscale rotors during her PhD. Inspired by the rotational mechanism of ATP synthase, Eva and her colleagues engineered a functional DNA rotating structure. She discussed her experience of using cryoEM (cryo‐electron microscopy) to characterize the stucture and optimize the design, and how new tools for analyzing cryoEM data made the ambitious data analysis involved in this process possible, and the promises of using molecular simulation to help inform design. We round out the conversation with a discussion of how she got into engineering nanorotors, visions for the future, and advice to future students about tackling huge projects.

Eva is a postdoc in the Cees Dekker’s research group at the Technical University of Delft. Her work is focussed on building artificial systems that are inspired by natural components of the cell. In particular, she is working on biomimetic systems to study transport of molecules through the nuclear pore complex. She obtained her PhD in 2021 working in Hendrik Dietz’ group at the Technical University of Munich. During this time, she built a novel rotating nanostructure made of DNA origami components with interlocked and coupled motion. This work was chosen as one of the finalists of the CeNS Nano Innovation Award 2021. She got her MSc degree at the Technical University of Munich and her BSc in physics studying at Padua University and at the Georg-August-University Göttingen.

Useful Links