Eric C. Greene, PhD

  • Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics
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Overview

Eric Greene is a professor at Columbia University, New York, New York, USA, in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics. He received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from Texas A&M University, College Station, USA, while working for Dorothy Shippen and conducted postdoctoral research with Kiyoshi Mizuuchi at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA. His laboratory uses novel approaches to single-molecule imaging for studying problems related to genome integrity. He enjoys fly fishing.

Academic Appointments

  • Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics

Research

Our group uses single-molecule optical microscopy to study fundamental interactions between proteins and nucleic acids. Our overall goal is to reveal the molecular mechanisms that cells use to repair, maintain, and decode their genetic information. This research combines aspects of biochemistry, physics, and nanoscale technology to answer questions about complex biological problems that cannot be easily addressed through traditional biochemical approaches. As part of our work, we have established robust experimental platforms that enable single molecule imaging of biochemical reaction mechanisms in a “high throughput” experimental format that can be applied to the study of protein-nucleic acid interactions. The advantages of our approaches are that we can see what proteins are bound to DNA, where they are bound, how they move, and how they interact with and influence other components of the system – all in real-time, at the level of a single reaction. We are applying this technology towards determining the physical basis for the mechanisms that proteins use to maintain genome integrity, with particular emphasis on reactions related to homologous DNA recombination.