P. Barnett PhD

PhD P. Barnett

Position

Research Associate

Main activities

Research

Specialisation

Molecular biology / protein biochemistry

Focus of research

Expertise
Phil Barnett joined the group in 2003 as a protein biochemist. He has a wide background of expertise in biochemistry from molecular genetics to the structural characterization of proteins. During his PhD period he focused on both the biochemical and molecular characterization of a HOCl producing enzyme secreted by a fungus–protein purification, enzyme kinetics, cloning and crystal structure of first vnadium containing chloroperoxidase.
Shortly thereafter he started work as a postdoc at the AMC working on the purification, crystallization and mutational/functional analysis of the yeast peroxisomal import proteins Pex5, Pex13 and Pex14. Protein modelling and sequence analysis became a personal and even resulted in a couple of extra publications during this period.
After this period he joined a small starting spin-off company, Chromagenics, of the UvA as senior scientist/post-doc. The group was interested in identifying and isolating chromatin boundary elements and putting them to use in mammalian protein expression systems. He left this position in 2003 to start work at the Department of Anatomy and Embryology.

For better, more up-to-date than WOS, view of published articles and book chapters please check out scholar.google.nl/citations

Current Research
Current research focusses on the application of genome wide techniques (eg. ChIP-seq, RNAseq, 4C, bioinformatics) aimed at unravelling the regulation of cardiac transcriptome. Application of these techniques to investigate and provide functional information and basis to GWAS (genome wide association study) data. Central hypothesis is driven by the idea that GWAS can be used as a (rough) positional indicator for regulatory sequences. Genetic variation between individuals leads to trait differences, which may be disadvantageous, particularly when accompanied by disease. Understanding these connections (molecularly) may lead to new insights and approaches to patient care.
This postion allows me to exploit my knowledge of both protein biochemistry and higher order gene regulation, whilst at the same time working in a clinically translational environment.