Dr. Junji Iwahara
Professor
The University of Texas Medical Branch
USA
Biography
Dr. Junji Iwahara received his PhD degree from University of Tokyo. Through his entire career, Dr. Iwahara has studied various aspects of protein-DNA interactions by using NMR spectroscopy. In his graduate work, he studied DNA-binding of centromere proteins by NMR. He received three years of postdoctoral training at Prof. Robert Clubb's laboratory of UCLA and conducted NMR studies of DNA recognition by gene-regulatory proteins. In 2002, he became a research fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Marius Clore (NIH). His research at NIH involved development of new NMR methods for macromolecular dynamics and kinetics. In particular, his publications on the paramagnetic relaxation enhancement (PRE) methods have been cited more than 1,000 times in total. In 2007, Dr. Iwahara joined the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) as a principal investigator. With strong support from UTMB's Sealy Center for Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics (SCSB), his group enjoys a research environment well suited for biophysical studies. His current research focuses on the dynamic processes whereby transcription factors and DNA-modifying enzymes scan DNA and locate their target sites.
Research Interest
Biochemistry and Molecular Biology