Job Dekker is a

Dutch Dutch or Nederlands commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands ** Dutch people as an ethnic group () ** Dutch nationality law, history and regulations of Dutch citizenship () ** Dutch language () * In specific terms, i ...

biologist. Dekker is a professor in the Department of

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 ...

, and the Department of

Biochemistry Biochemistry, or biological chemistry, is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology, a ...

and Molecular

Biotechnology Biotechnology is a multidisciplinary field that involves the integration of natural sciences and Engineering Science, engineering sciences in order to achieve the application of organisms and parts thereof for products and services. Specialists ...

at the

University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School The UMass Chan Medical School is a public medical school in Worcester, Massachusetts. It is part of the University of Massachusetts system. It consists of three schools: the T.H. Chan School of Medicine, the Morningside Graduate School of Biom ...

and an Investigator at the

Howard Hughes Medical Institute The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) is an American non-profit medical research organization headquartered in Chevy Chase, Maryland with additional facilities in Ashburn, Virginia. It was founded in 1953 by Howard Hughes, an American busin ...

. Dekker studied

molecular genetics Molecular genetics is a branch of biology that addresses how differences in the structures or expression of DNA molecules manifests as variation among organisms. Molecular genetics often applies an "investigative approach" to determine the st ...

and biochemistry as an undergraduate at

Utrecht University Utrecht University (UU; , formerly ''Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht'') is a public university, public research university in Utrecht, Netherlands. Established , it is one of the oldest universities in the Netherlands. In 2023, it had an enrollment of ...

, where he also obtained a Ph.D. in Physiological Chemistry in 1997. During his postdoctoral studies in Nancy Kleckner’s lab at Harvard University, Dekker developed a method, called

chromosome conformation capture Chromosome conformation capture techniques (often abbreviated to 3C technologies or 3C-based methods) are a set of molecular biology methods used to analyze the spatial organization of chromatin in a cell. These methods quantify the number of in ...

, for identifying a matrix of the pair-wise interactions between different sites of

chromatin Chromatin is a complex of DNA and protein found in eukaryote, eukaryotic cells. The primary function is to package long DNA molecules into more compact, denser structures. This prevents the strands from becoming tangled and also plays important r ...

and inferring the spatial folding of

chromosomes A chromosome is a package of DNA containing part or all of the genetic material of an organism. In most chromosomes, the very long thin DNA fibers are coated with nucleosome-forming packaging proteins; in eukaryotic cells, the most importa ...

from this information. Dekker's work has led to insights into how genomes are folded in three dimensions, the mechanisms that cells employ to fold chromosomes, and how chromosome folding contributes to

gene regulation Regulation of gene expression, or gene regulation, includes a wide range of mechanisms that are used by cells to increase or decrease the production of specific gene products (protein or RNA). Sophisticated programs of gene expression are wide ...

and

chromosome segregation Chromosome segregation is the process in eukaryotes by which two sister chromatids formed as a consequence of DNA replication, or paired homologous chromosomes, separate from each other and migrate to opposite poles of the nucleus. This segreg ...

. Awarded the Edward Novitski Prize in 2018, and the

Biochemical Society The Biochemical Society is a learned society in the United Kingdom in the field of biochemistry, including all the cellular and molecular biosciences. It was founded in 1911 and acquired the existing '' Biochemical Journal'' the following year. T ...

International Award in 2018. Dekker is a member of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

(2022), and the

National Academy of Medicine The National Academy of Medicine (NAM), known as the Institute of Medicine (IoM) until 2015, is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Medicine is a part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineerin ...

(2021).

References

External links

*
www.dekkerlab.org
Dutch biochemists Utrecht University alumni UMass Chan Medical School faculty Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Members of the National Academy of Medicine {{Netherlands-scientist-stub