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London Calling 2024 - Speakers

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Oxford Nanopore Technologies

Daniel Branton

Daniel Branton
Job title
Institution
Harvard University, USA
Biography

Daniel Branton is Higgins Professor of Biology, Emeritus, at Harvard University. He received his BA in Mathematics from Cornell University and PhD in plant physiology from University California, Berkley, where he was Professor of Botany before moving to Harvard in 1973. Early in his career at the University of California, Branton discovered that biological membranes and lipid bilayers can easily be cleft into two sheets to reveal their hydrophobic core-structures, including transmembrane proteins and membrane channels. During the 1960's his research visualizing membranes after freeze-etching were critical in providing the foundation for our current understanding of their lipid-bilayer structure. Subsequently, Branton quantified the interactions between erythroid transmembrane proteins and membrane skeletal proteins; showed how the basic pattern of protein-protein interactions that interconnects the erythrocyte membrane skeleton provides a detailed molecular explanation of erythrocyte shape; and discovered that the clathrin coat of endocytic vesicles is composed of hexameric molecules assembled as a triskelion. In 1995, with David Deamer, Branton proposed that biopolymers can be characterized and sequenced by drawing them through a nanopore. This idea led to the development of nanopore sequencing of DNA and RNA. Branton is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.

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