Biochemist
Dr. Bustamante is a Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology, Physics, and Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. Born in Lima, Peru on May 5, 1951, this Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at the University of California, Berkeley, came to the U.S. from Peru as a Fulbright scholar. In the early 1990s, while at the University of Oregon, he and his colleagues tacked one end of a DNA molecule to a magnetic bead and measured its elasticity by tugging at the bead with magnets. "We did it because nobody had done it before. And it was fun, said Bustamente." The experiment established that large molecules could be mechanically manipulated.

He received his B.S. degree from Cayetano Heredia University in Lima, Peru; and his masters in biochemistry from San Marcos University; before receiving his Ph.D. degree in biophysics from UC Berkeley, where he studied with Ignacio Tinoco, Jr in 1981.
As a postdoctoral fellow at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Dr. Bustamante studied with Marc Maestre. He was a member of the chemistry department at the University of New Mexico in 1982. Before moving to Berkeley, he was an HHMI investigator at the University of Oregon. Dr. Bustamante uses novel methods of single-molecule visualization, such as scanning force microscopy, to study the structure and function of nucleoprotein assemblies. His laboratory is developing methods of single-molecule manipulation, such as optical tweezers, to characterize the elasticity of DNA, to induce the mechanical unfolding of individual protein molecules, and to investigate the machine-like behavior of molecular motors.His advise to students, "I hope that in my professional lifetime, scientists will be interested not only in the biology that exists but also in the biology that is possible"

Among his many honors: American Physical Society Fellow (1995), New Mexico Eminent Scholar (1989), Alfred P. Sloan Fellow (1985), Searle Scholar (1984) and Fulbright Scholar (1975-80). Dr. Bustamante is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Courtesy HHMI