RNA folds. Proteins pump. Cells crawl. In these and countless other natural phenomena, physical mechanisms are inseparable from biological function. Biophysics strives to explore these connections between physics, chemistry, biology.

Biophysics at the University of Oregon encompasses a wide variety of groups spanning the Departments of Chemistry, Physics, and Biology, and the Institute of Molecular Biology, Materials Science Institute, Oregon Center for Optics, and Institute for Theoretical Science.

The list below briefly describes the "biophysical" faculty at UO. Additional information can be found by clicking on the appropriate links.

•   Andy Berglund -- Structural biology of RNA and Protein-RNA interactions in Muscular Dystrophy. [Web site]
  
•   Victoria DeRose -- Physical and chemical properties of RNA, with emphasis on RNA catalysis and RNA-metal interactions. Construction of novel metalloproteins. Spectroscopic methods including magnetic resonance (EPR and NMR). [Web site]
•   Marina Guenza -- Conformational dynamics of proteins and protein-protein interaction. Theory, equilibrium and non-equilibrium statistical mechanics, modeling and simulations. Theoretical predictions of NMR relaxation times of proteins, such as the signal transduction protein CheY. [Web site]
  
•   Heiner Linke -- General operational principles of molecular motors, including experimental approaches to artificial molecular motors, and numerical modeling of biological motors such as myosin V. [Web site]
  
•   Andy Marcus -- Time-resolved electronic coherence spectroscopy for studies of molecular dynamics in complex systems, including the motions of electronic excitations in supercooled fluids, light harvesting energy transfer complexes, and biological macromolecules in living cells. [Web site]
•   Brad Nolan -- Structure and function of cytoskeletal proteins and their regulators using biochemical and biophysical techniques, with a focus on x-ray crystallography; establishing molecular bases for diverse cellular processes that require dynamic rearrangements of the cytoskeleton, such as endocytosis, exocytosis, cell motility and cell division.
•   Raghuveer Parthasarathy -- Physical properties of biomembranes and other biomaterials; Advanced optical techniques, including optical trapping of microparticles and cells. [Web site]
  
•   Ken Prehoda -- Mechanisms of protein-interaction based regulation; Structural biochemistry using x-ray crystallography and NMR. [Web site]
  
•   Jim Remington
•   Pete von Hippel -- Protein-protein and protein-nucleic interactions involved in the structure, assembly and function of 'macromolecular machines', focusing particularly on DNA replication and RNA transcription complexes. The group uses optical, chemical and theoretical biophysical and biochemical tools and approaches in these studies. [Web site]