About Tom Perkins

My research focuses on single molecule measurements of biological systems. One outstanding question is: how do motor proteins transduce chemical energy into physical motion? Another is: how does the structure and dynamics of membrane proteins affect their functions? We specialize in developing and applying high precision measurements using optical traps and atomic force microscopes to answer these and other interesting questions.

Pulling HIV Apart

“It’s particularly small, unfolds at low forces and refolds fast… This is about as challenging as it can get.”

There are many molecules within the virus known as HIV, but only one is shaped like a hairpin. This molecule, aptly named the HIV RNA hairpin, allows the virus to create its...
Precision Biomechanics

The Perkins group has made dramatic advances in the use of Atomic Force Microscopes (AFMs) to study large single biomolecules, such...
Exquisitely sensitive experiment yields new view of membrane protein unfolding

The Perkins group continues to extend the performance of its unique Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) technology,...
Thomas Perkins: Atomic force microscopy measures properties of proteins and protein folding

Tom Perkins discusses his atomic force spectroscopy research in this SPIE (the international society for optics and photonics)...
The Land of Enhancement: AFM Spectroscopy

The Perkins Group has demonstrated a 50-to-100 times improvement in the time resolution for studying the details...
The Measure of Small Things

Fellow Tom Perkins’ group is significantly closer to realizing its long-standing dream of using atomic force microscopy (AFM) to...
bR Phone Home

The groups of Fellow Adjoint Markus Raschke and Fellow Tom Perkins joined forces recently to shine light onto a bacterial membrane protein called bacteriorhodopsin (bR). They used a new infrared (IR) light imaging system with a spatial resolution and chemical sensitivity of just a few bR...
Torsionally constrained DNA for single molecule studies

Over the last 17 years, the ability to twist individual DNA molecules has led to many important results in the polymer physics of DNA and the mechanochemistry of enzymes that alter DNA’s topology. The key substrate for these studies is torsionally...

Recent News

Congrats to former Perkins lab undergraduate William “John” Van Patten for being awarded a Ford Foundation Fellowship for his research in the Bustamante Lab.
Congrats to Hao and his co-authors on his new Angewandte Chemie paper probing the initial unfolding of bacteriorhodopsin.
Tom elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Bon voyage to Matt. Have fun at Intel!
Congrats to Meredith for being named a BSI Scholar.

More details on the News page -->

Highlighted Pub

Hidden dynamics in the unfolding of individual bacteriorhodopsin proteins
H. Yu, Siewny, M. G. W. , Edwards, D. T. , Sanders, A. W. , and Perkins, T. T. , “Hidden dynamics in the unfolding of individual bacteriorhodopsin proteins”, Science, vol. 355, no. 6328, pp. 945-950, 2017.
DOI

View more on the Publications Page -->

Multimedia

Optical tweezers interactive figure.

The multimedia galleries have research photos, photos from around Colorado, simulations and more.

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Lab Opportunities

Post-doctoral Positions in Single Molecule Biophysics

Multiple post-doctoral positions are available in the Perkins Lab at JILA, which is located on the University of Colorado at Boulder campus. These positions will span a range of instruments and applications.

Learn more on the Openings page -->

© 2019 JILA, University of Colorado/NIST