Molecular Biophysics of DNA repair nanomachines

Our group study DNA-protein interactions involved in DNA break repair and maintenance using novel approaches based on Single Molecule (SM) techniques. SM manipulation and imaging techniques offer huge potential to investigate DNA break repair reactions in completely new ways, providing information that is inaccessible to conventional ensemble experiments. Using SM techniques, it is possible to directly study individual enzymatic cycles in an unsynchronized population. Our group employs atomic force microscopy as primarily technique for topographic characterization of DNA-protein interactions. Also, over the last years, we have developed two setups of magnetic tweezers, one of them combined with fluorescence, and one optical tweezers setup that allows manipulation of individual molecules with nanometer precision and application of force in the sub-picoNewtons range. We focus our efforts in two research areas: DNA repair and DNA cohesion and condensation.