Professor Andrew Turberfield

Background

I studied Natural Sciences at Clare College, Cambridge and received my D.Phil. in experimental condensed matter physics from Oxford (St. John’s College). I spent four years as a Junior Research Fellow at Christ Church and two as a Stipendiary Lecturer at University College, Oxford, before being appointed to a Tutorial Fellowship at Magdalen in 1992, then to a Supernumerary Fellowship / Fellowship by Special Election. I was awarded an EPSRC Senior Fellowship and a Royal Society-Wolfson Research Merit Award, the Tabor Medal of the Institute of Physics and the Rozenberg Tulip Award. I was President of the International Society for Science, Computation and Engineering in 2007-2008. I am now an Emeritus Fellow of Magdalen and an Emeritus Professor of Physics.

Research Interests

My background is in solid state physics: I used time-resolved spectroscopy to study hot carrier relaxation in quantum wells and developed new spectroscopies of correlated states of 2D electrons in the fractional quantum Hall regime. Prof. Bob Denning (Magdalen) and I developed a method to create microstructured photonic materials by 3D optical lithography: this invention was taken up by laboratories around the world. I spent a sabbatical year at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey in 1998-99 where I started to work on biomolecular self-assembly which became the focus of my interdisciplinary research group at Oxford. The information storage capacity of DNA is the key to its use in nanofabrication: by designing the base sequences of synthetic oligonucleotides (short strands of DNA) it is possible to control the interactions between them and thus the structures that they form by hybridization (base pairing). My DNA Nanostructures research group in Oxford Physics worked with colleagues in physics, biochemistry, physiology, chemistry and computer science to develop and exploit our ability to use programmed biomolecular assembly to make molecular-scale structures and machines.

Selected Publications

• “A DNA molecular printer capable of programmable positioning and patterning in two dimensions”, E. Benson, R. Carrascosa Marzo, J. Bath and A. J. Turberfield, Science Robotics 7, eabn5459 (2022)
• “DNA origami signposts for identifying proteins on cell membranes by electron cryotomography”, E. Silvester, B. Vollmer, V. Pražák, D. Vasishtan, E. A. Machala, C Whittle, S. Black, J. Bath, A. J Turberfield, K. Grünewald and L. A. Baker, Cell 184, 1110-1121.e16 (2021)
• “Design of hidden thermodynamic driving for non-equilibrium systems via mismatch elimination during DNA strand displacemen”, N. E. C. Haley, T. E. Ouldridge, I. M. Ruiz, A. Geraldini, A. A. Louis, J. Bath and A. J. Turberfield, Nat. Commun. 11, 2562 (2020)
• “An Autonomous Molecular Assembler for Programmable Chemical Synthesis”, W. Meng, R. A. Muscat, M. L. McKee, P. J. Milnes, A. H. El-Sagheer, J. Bath, B. G. Davis, T. Brown, R. K. O’Reilly and A. J. Turberfield, Nature Chem.8, 542–548 (2016)
• “Guiding the folding pathway of DNA origami”, K. E. Dunn, F. Dannenberg, T. E. Ouldridge, M. Kwiatkowska, A. J. Turberfield and J. Bath, Nature 525, 82–86 (2015)
• “Direct observation of stepwise movement of a synthetic molecular transporter”, S.F.J. Wickham, M. Endo, Y. Katsuda, K. Hidaka, J. Bath, H. Sugiyama A.J. Turberfield, Nature Nanotech. 6, 166-169 (2011)
• “Coordinated chemomechanical cycles: a mechanism for autonomous molecular motion”, S.J. Green, J. Bath, A.J. Turberfield, Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 238101 (2008)
• “Engineering entropy-driven reactions and networks catalyzed by DNA”, D. Y. Zhang, A. J. Turberfield, B. Yurke and E. Winfree, Science 318, 1121-1125 (2007)
• “Rapid chiral assembly of rigid DNA building blocks for molecular nanofabrication”, R. P. Goodman, I. A. T. Schaap , C. F Tardin, C. M. Erben, R. M. Berry, C. F. Schmidt, A. J. Turberfield, Science 310, 1661-1665 (2005)
• “DNA Fuel for Free-Running Nanomachines”, A. J. Turberfield, J. C. Mitchell, B. Yurke, A. P. Mills, Jr., M. I. Blakey, F. C. Simmel, Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 118102 (2003)
• “A DNA-fuelled molecular machine made of DNA”, B. Yurke, A.J. Turberfield, A.P. Mills, Jr., F.C. Simmel and J.L. Neumann, Nature 406, 605-608 (2000)
• “Fabrication of photonic crystals for the visible spectrum by holographic lithography”, M. Campbell, D. N. Sharp, M. T. Harrison, R. G. Denning and A. J. Turberfield Nature 404, 53-56 (2000)
• “Optical Detection of the Integer and Fractional Quantum Hall Effects in GaAs at milliKelvin Temperatures”, A. J. Turberfield, S. R. Haynes, P. A. Wright, R. A. Ford, R. G. Clark, J. F. Ryan, C. T. Foxon and J. J. Harris Phys. Rev. Lett. 65, 637-640 (1990)