Hans Victor Westerhoff (born 14 January 1953)Prof. dr. H.V. Westerhoff, 1953-
at the

University of Amsterdam The University of Amsterdam (abbreviated as UvA, ) is a public university, public research university located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Established in 1632 by municipal authorities, it is the fourth-oldest academic institution in the Netherlan ...

''Album Academicum'' website is a Dutch biologist and biochemist who is professor of synthetic

systems biology Systems biology is the computational modeling, computational and mathematical analysis and modeling of complex biological systems. It is a biology-based interdisciplinary field of study that focuses on complex interactions within biological system ...

at the

and

AstraZeneca AstraZeneca plc () (AZ) is a British-Swedish multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company with its headquarters at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus in Cambridge, UK. It has a portfolio of products for major diseases in areas includi ...

professor of systems biology at the

University of Manchester The University of Manchester is a public university, public research university in Manchester, England. The main campus is south of Manchester city centre, Manchester City Centre on Wilmslow Road, Oxford Road. The University of Manchester is c ...

. Currently he is a Chair of AstraZeneca and a director of the

Manchester Centre for Integrative Systems Biology The Manchester Institute of Biotechnology, formerly the Manchester Interdisciplinary Biocentre (MIB) is a research institute of the University of Manchester, England. Role The centre was designed to enable academic communities to explore speci ...

Career

Westerhoff was born in

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , ; ; ) is the capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, largest city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It has a population of 933,680 in June 2024 within the city proper, 1,457,018 in the City Re ...

, Netherlands. He was educated at the

where he was awarded a

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

in 1983 for investigations of

non-equilibrium thermodynamics Non-equilibrium thermodynamics is a branch of thermodynamics that deals with physical systems that are not in thermodynamic equilibrium but can be described in terms of macroscopic quantities (non-equilibrium state variables) that represent an ex ...

and the control of

biological thermodynamics {{Research paper, date=August 2024 Biological thermodynamics (Thermodynamics of biological systems) is a science that explains the nature and general laws of thermodynamic processes occurring in living organisms as nonequilibrium thermodynamic sy ...

supervised by Karel van Dam. In 1996 he succeeded Ad Stouthamer as professor of microbiology at the

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam The (abbreviated as ''VU Amsterdam'' or simply ''VU'' when in context) is a public university, public research university in Amsterdam, Netherlands, founded in 1880. The VU Amsterdam is one of two large, publicly funded research universities in ...

Research

At the beginning of his career Westerhoff worked in the area of

in relation to biological energy transduction. His work on this topic led to a book written with Karel Van Dam. After being a coauthor of one of the first experimental papers to stimulate interest in

metabolic control analysis In biochemistry, metabolic control analysis (MCA) is a mathematical framework for describing Metabolic pathway, metabolic, Cell signaling#Signaling pathways, signaling, and genetic pathways. MCA quantifies how variables, such as fluxes and Chemi ...

and participating in the group that proposed a harmonized terminology, Westerhoff moved progressively towards working on multi-enzyme systems as his major activity, starting with an analysis of the effect of enzyme activity on metabolite concentrations. He published many papers in this area, of which one may note an analysis of the control of regulatory cascades, analysqis of glycolytic oscilations in yeast, and showing that the ''in vivo'' behaviour of ''Trypanosoma brucei'' agreed with the kinetic properties of the glycolytic enzymes. Westerhoff and colleagues discovered

magainin The magainins are a class of antimicrobial peptides found in the African clawed frog (''Xenopus laevis''). The peptides are cationic, generally lack a stable conformation in water but form amphipathic α-helix in membranes; their mechanism agai ...

in the

African clawed frog The African clawed frog (''Xenopus laevis''), also known as simply xenopus, African clawed toad, African claw-toed frog or the ''platanna'') is a species of African Aquatic animal, aquatic frog of the family Pipidae. Its name is derived from the ...

which helps it fight against

bacteria Bacteria (; : bacterium) are ubiquitous, mostly free-living organisms often consisting of one Cell (biology), biological cell. They constitute a large domain (biology), domain of Prokaryote, prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micr ...

. In December 1996 he and his group discovered a

nitric-oxide reductase Nitric oxide reductase, an enzyme, catalyzes the reduction of nitric oxide (NO) to nitrous oxide (N2O). The enzyme participates in nitrogen metabolism and in the microbial defense against nitric oxide toxicity. The catalyzed reaction may be depen ...

of ''

Paracoccus denitrificans ''Paracoccus denitrificans'', is a coccoid bacterium known for its nitrate reducing properties, its ability to replicate under conditions of hypergravity and for being a relative of the eukaryotic mitochondrion (endosymbiotic theory). Descript ...

''. In conjunction with many other workers Westerhoff used a community approach to construct a consensus yeast metabolic network and subsequently applied the same approach to human metabolism.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Westerhoff, Hans V. 1953 births Living people Dutch biologists Dutch biochemists Systems biologists University of Amsterdam alumni Academic staff of the University of Amsterdam Academic staff of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Manchester University (Indiana) faculty Scientists from Amsterdam