Alexander van Oudenaarden
Alexander van Oudenaarden (2017)
Born (1970-03-19) 19 March 1970 (age 53)
Zuidland, The Netherlands
CitizenshipKingdom of The Netherlands
Alma materDelft University of Technology (MSc, MSc, PhD)
Scientific career
FieldsBiophysics, Systems biology, Synthetic biology
InstitutionsHubrecht Institute

Alexander van Oudenaarden (19 March 1970) is a Dutch biophysicist and systems biologist. He is a leading researcher in stem cell biology, specialising in single cell techniques. In 2012 he started as director of the Hubrecht Institute and was awarded three times an ERC Advanced Grant, in 2012, 2017, and 2022. He was awarded the Spinoza Prize in 2017.

Biography

Van Oudenaarden was born 19 March 1970, in Zuidland, a small town in the Dutch province of South Holland. He studied at the Delft University of Technology, where he obtained an MSc degree in Materials Science and Engineering (cum laude) and an MSc degree in Physics, both in 1993, and subsequently a PhD degree in Physics (cum laude) in 1998 in experimental condensed matter physics, under the supervision of professor J.E. Mooij. He received the Andries Miedema Award (best doctoral research in the field of condensed matter physics in the Netherlands) for his thesis on "Quantum vortices and quantum interference effects in circuits of small tunnel junctions". In 1998, he moved to Stanford University, where he was a postdoctoral researcher in the departments of Biochemistry and of Microbiology & Immunology, working on force generation of polymerising actin filaments in the Theriot lab and a postdoctoral researcher in the department of Chemistry, working on Micropatterning of supported phospholipid bi-layers in the Boxer lab. In 2000 he joined the department of Physics at MIT as an assistant professor, was tenured in 2004 and became a full professor. In 2001 he received the NSF CAREER award, and was both an Alfred Sloan Research Fellow and the Keck Career Development Career Development Professor in Biomedical Engineering. In 2012 Alexander became the director of the Hubrecht Institute as the successor of Hans Clevers. In 2017 he received his second ERC Advanced Grant, for his study titled "a single-cell genomics approach integrating gene expression, lineage, and physical interactions". In 2022 he received his third ERC Advanced Grant, titled "scTranslatomics".[1]

In 2014 van Oudenaarden became a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.[2] In 2017 he was one of four winners of the Spinoza Prize.[3] In 2022 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (International Honorary Member).[4]

He is married and has three children.

Work

During his time at MIT his lab started with parallel lines of research in actin dynamics[5][6] and noise in gene networks,[7][8][9] and then focused on stochasticity in gene networks[10][11][12][13] biological networks as control systems,[14][15][16] and the evolution of small networks.

Today, Van Oudenaardens work at the Hubrecht Institute focuses on stochastic gene expression,[17][18] developing new tools for quantifying gene expression in single cells [19][20] and MicroRNAs [21][22]

References

  1. ^ "List of Principal Investigators – All domains" (PDF).
  2. ^ "Alexander van Oudenaarden". Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Archived from the original on 18 September 2020.
  3. ^ "Prof. dr. ir. A. (Alexander) van Oudenaarden". Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research. Archived from the original on 6 November 2020.
  4. ^ "Alexander van Oudenaarden". 12 October 2023.
  5. ^ Upadhyaya, A; Chabot, J. R.; Andreeva, A.; Samadani, A.; van Oudenaarden, A. (2003). "Probing polymerization forces by using actin-propelled lipid vesicles". PNAS USA. 100 (8): 4521–6. Bibcode:2003PNAS..100.4521U. doi:10.1073/pnas.0837027100. PMC 153588. PMID 12657740.
  6. ^ Upadhyaya, A; A. van Oudenaarden (2003). "Biomimetic systems for studying actin-based motility". Current Biology. 13 (18): R734–44. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2003.08.051. PMID 13678615. S2CID 7557122.
  7. ^ Thattai, M; A. van Oudenaarden (2001). "Intrinsic noise in gene regulatory networks". PNAS USA. 98 (15): 8614–9. Bibcode:2001PNAS...98.8614T. doi:10.1073/pnas.151588598. PMC 37484. PMID 11438714.
  8. ^ Ozbudak, E.; Thattai, M.; Kurtser, I.; Grossman, A. D.; van Oudenaarden, A. (2002). "Regulation of noise in the expression of a single gene". Nature Genetics. 31 (1): 69–73. doi:10.1038/ng869. PMID 11967532. S2CID 205357854.
  9. ^ Thattai, M; A. van Oudenaarden (2002). "Attenuation of noise in ultrasensitive signaling cascades". Biophysical Journal. 82 (6): 2943–50. Bibcode:2002BpJ....82.2943T. doi:10.1016/S0006-3495(02)75635-X. PMC 1302082. PMID 12023217.
  10. ^ Pedraza, J M; A. van Oudenaarden (2005). "Noise propagation in gene networks". Science. 307 (5717): 1965–9. Bibcode:2005Sci...307.1965P. doi:10.1126/science.1109090. PMID 15790857. S2CID 18629554.
  11. ^ Becskei, A; B. B. Kaufmann; A. van Oudenaarden (2005). "Contributions of low molecule number and chromosomal positioning to stochastic gene expression". Nature Genetics. 37 (9): 937–44. doi:10.1038/ng1616. PMID 16086016. S2CID 7301259.
  12. ^ Acar, M; A. Becskei; A. van Oudenaarden (2005). "Enhancement of cellular memory by reducing stochastic transitions". Nature. 435 (7039): 228–32. Bibcode:2005Natur.435..228A. doi:10.1038/nature03524. PMID 15889097. S2CID 4429383.
  13. ^ Chabot, J R; J. M. Pedraza; P. Luitel; A. van Oudenaarden (2007). "Stochastic gene expression out-of-steady-state in the cyanobacterial circadian clock". Nature. 450 (7173): 1249–52. Bibcode:2007Natur.450.1249C. doi:10.1038/nature06395. PMID 18097413. S2CID 1670452.
  14. ^ Thattai, M; A. Becskei; A. van Oudenaarden (2005). "A system of counteracting feedback loops regulates Cdc42p activity during spontaneous cell polarization". Developmental Cell. 9 (4): 565–71. doi:10.1016/j.devcel.2005.08.014. PMID 16198298.
  15. ^ Tsang, J; J. Zhu; A. van Oudenaarden (2007). "MicroRNA-mediated feedback and feedforward loops are recurrent network motifs in mammals". Molecular Cell. 26 (5): 753–67. doi:10.1016/j.molcel.2007.05.018. PMC 2072999. PMID 17560377.
  16. ^ Mettetal, J; D. Muzzey; C. Gomez-Uribe; A. van Oudenaarden (2008). "The frequency dependence of osmo-adaptation in Saccharomyces cerevisiae". Science. 319 (5862): 482–4. Bibcode:2008Sci...319..482M. doi:10.1126/science.1151582. PMC 2916730. PMID 18218902.
  17. ^ Junker, Philipp; Alexander (2014). "Every cell is special: genome-wide studies add a new dimension to single-cell biology". Cell. 157 (1): 8–11. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2014.02.010. PMID 24679522.
  18. ^ Ji, Ni; Middelkoop, Teije; Mentink, Remco; Betist, Marco; Tonegawa, Satto; Mooijman, Dylan; Korswagen, Hendrik; Alexander (2013). "Feedback control of gene expression variability in the Caenorhabditis elegans Wnt pathway". Cell. 155 (4): 869–880. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2013.09.060. PMID 24209624.
  19. ^ Grün, Dominic; Kester, Lennart; Alexander (2014). "Validation of noise models for single-cell transcriptomics". Nature Methods. 11 (6): 637–640. doi:10.1038/nmeth.2930. PMID 24747814. S2CID 26868243.
  20. ^ Klemm, Sandy; Semrau, Stefan; Wiebrands, Kay; Mooijman, Dylan; Faddah, Dina; Jaenisch, Rudolf; Alexander (2014). "Transcriptional profiling of cells sorted by RNA abundance". Nature Methods. 11 (5): 549–551. doi:10.1038/nmeth.2910. PMC 4174458. PMID 24681693.
  21. ^ Dong; Kim, Dominic Grün; Alexander (2013). "Dampening of expression oscillations by synchronous regulation of a microRNA and its target". Nature Genetics. 45 (11): 1337–1344. doi:10.1038/ng.2763. PMC 3812263. PMID 24036951.
  22. ^ Mukherji, Shankar; Ebert, Margaret; Zheng, Grace; Tsang, John; Sharp, Phil; Alexander (2011). "MicroRNAs can generate thresholds in target gene expression" (PDF). Nature Genetics. 43 (9): 854–859. doi:10.1038/ng.905. PMC 3163764. PMID 21857679.

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