Paul Selvin

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• Paul Selvin - Personal Web Page

Education

• Ph.D., Physics, University of California-Berkeley, 1990

Biography

Paul Selvin earned a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1990. Formally it was in physics, but in reality, it was in biophysics. The last experiment for his thesis, for example, was measuring the torsional rigidity of DNA by looking at a fluorophore intercalated in DNA, twisting around. A paper based on this experiment was published in Science (Selvin, 1992, Science) and later confirmed in a single molecule experiment (Bryant, Nature, 2003).

Professor Selvin did two sets of experiments during his postdoctoral training. One was developing a new type of fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) based on lanthanides, called luminescence resonance energy transfer (LRET). He later used this technique to discover how a potassium ion channel, in part responsible for nerve conduction, responds to voltage (Cha, 1999, Nature; Posson, 2005, Nature). The second involved single molecule fluorescence—the first measurement of FRET between a single donor and single acceptor (Ha, 1996, PNAS).

After joining the Department of Physics at the University of Illinois in 1997, his interest has turned to molecular motors — proteins whose job is moving cargoes around the cell. For example, chromosomes are bound to molecular motors (kinesin and dynein) and under their power, are moved into the two halves of a cell during cell division. Selvin’s task was to determine how the motors moved. They were known to be dimeric, with two “feet,” held together by a head that consumed ATP (the universal food of the cell) and a stalk that bound to the cargo. It was also known that for each ATP burned up, these proteins moved between 8 and 37 nm, depending on the individual motor.

But did they move in a walking-type motion (also called “hand-over-hand”), or did they move as an inchworm does? A walking-type motion would move the back foot twice the center-of-mass distance, with the front foot not translating at all; an inchworm-type motion would move all parts equally—equal to the center of mass. The problem was that this distance for the walking motion was only 74 nm for the biggest motor, and 16 nm for the smallest motor—or 37 nm and 8 nm for an inchworm motion—about 30 times smaller than the diffraction limit of light, arguably the smallest distance that can be resolved with visible light.

The trick to get around this problem was to realize that a single molecule’s position can be located arbitrarily well. It’s much like a mountain peak, which can be located to within a few yards, even though the mountain itself may be a a mile wide. Similarly, a single molecule’s center can be determined to be its width (~250 nm), divided by the square root of the numbers of photons collected (see left diagram). Selvin and his group managed to collect 10,000 photons in 0.5 s, meaning that the fluorophore’s center could be determined to ±1.25 nm (250/√104). With some clever chemistry, the single fluorophore could last several minutes, meaning that Selvin could watch the fluorescently-labeled molecular motor take several steps (Yildiz, 2003, Science). He called the technique FIONA—Fluorescence Imaging with One-Nanometer Accuracy.

The first measurement was performed in vitro to control the amount of ATP that the motor “ate,” thereby slowing it down so each individual step could be seen. With FIONA, Selvin found that from the biggest motor, Myosin V, (Yildiz, 2003, Science) to the smallest motor, kinesin, (Yildiz, 2004, Science), to one in between (Myosin VI), (Yildiz, 2004, J.Biol.Chem.), the motors all moved in a hand-over-hand, or walking, fashion. This discovery won the award as one of the ten most significant advances in science for 2003, as judged by Science magazine. It also won for Selvin’s student, Ahmet Yildiz, Science’s grand prize (a world-wide competition) for the most noteworthy Ph.D thesis.

Selvin then looked in vivo, i.e., inside a cell (Kural, 2005, Science). Here the time resolution had to be improved to 1 msec—a 500-fold increase—because the ATP was now not under his control, and was at a fairly high concentration. The motion of individual kinesins, and individual dyneins, could be measured, and surprisingly, they could move cargo around more than 10 times faster than what had been measured in vitro!

Selvin is now combing FIONA with optical traps (holding particles with light) in vivo, to see how many motors are causing such large velocities. Selvin’s future plans call for measurements in situ, for example, in Planaria and in C. Elegans, to test how these motors act in “real life.”

Selected Articles in Journals

• Yuansheng Sun; Giorgio Tortarolo; Kai Wen Teng; Yuji Ishitsuka; Ulas C. Coskun; Shih-Chu Jeff Liao; Alberto Diaspro; Giuseppe Vicidomini; Paul R. Selvin; Beniamino Barbieri. A novel pulsed STED microscopy method using FastFLIM and the phasor plots. Proc. SPIE 10069, Multiphoton Microscopy in the Biomedical Sciences XVII, 100691C (February 21, 2017).
• Zhang, Ruobing; Fruhwirth, Gilbert; Coban, Oana; Barrett, James; Burgoyne, Thomas; Lee, Sang Hak; Simonson, Paul; Baday, Murat; Kholodenko, Boris; Futter, Clare; Ng, Tony; Selvin, Paul R. Probing the Heterogeneity of Protein Kinase Activation in Cells by Super-Resolution Microscopy. ACS Nano 11:1, 249–257 (Oct 21, 2016).
• Kai Wen Teng, Yuji Ishitsuka, Pin Ren, Yeoan Youn, Xiang Deng, Pinghua Ge, Sang Hak Lee, Andrew S. Belmont, and Paul Selvin. Labeling proteins inside living cells using external fluorophores for microscopy. eLife 5:e20378 (2016).
• Mikhail Eugene Kandel, Kai Wen Teng, Paul R. Selvin, and Gabriel Popescu. Label-Free Imaging of Single Microtubule Dynamics Using Spatial Light Interference Microscopy, ACS Nano 11:1 647-655 (2016)
• Liang Ma, Chunlai Tu, Phuong Le, Shweta Chitoor, Sung Jun Lim, Mohammad U. Zahid, Kai Wen Teng, Pinghua Ge, Paul R. Selvin, and Andrew M. Smith. Multidentate Polymer Coatings for Compact and Homogeneous Quantum Dots with Efficient Bioconjugation. J. Amer. Chem. Soc. 138, 3382-3394 (2016).
• Sang Hak Lee, Murat Baday, Marco Tjioe, Paul D. Simonson, Ruobing Zhang, En Cai, Paul R. Selvin. "Using fixed fiduciary markers for stage drift correction." Optics Express 20(11), 12177-12183 (2012). Reprinted in Virtual Journal for Biomedical Optics (see http://vjbo.osa.org/virtual_issue.cfm).
• Yanxin Liu, Jen Hsin, HyeongJun Kim, Paul R. Selvin, Klaus Schulten. "Extension of a Three-Helix Bundle Domain of Myosin VI and Key Role of Calmodulins." Biophysical Journal 100(12), 2964-2973 (Jun 22, 2011).
• C. Kural, Hwajin Kim , S. Syed, G. Goshima, V. I. Gladimir, and P. R. Selvin. Kinesin and dynein move a peroxisome in vivo: a tug-of-war or coordinated movement? Science 308, 1469-1472 (2005).
• D. J. Posson, P. Ge, C. Miller, F. Bezanilla, and P. R. Selvin. Small vertical movement of a K⁺ channel voltage sensor measured with luminescence energy transfer. Nature 436, 848-851 (2005).
• C. Kural, H. Balci, and P. R. Selvin. Molecular motors one at a time: FIONA to the rescue. J. Phys.: Cond. Matt. 17, S3979-3995 (2005).
• H. Balci, T. Ha, H. L. Sweeney, and P. R. Selvin. Interhead distance measurements in myosin VI via SHRImP support a simplified hand-over-hand model. Biophys. J. 89, 413-417 (2005).
• T. Sakamoto, A. Yildez, P. R. Selvin, and J. R. Sellers. Step-size is determined by neck length in myosin V. Biochem. 44, 16203-16210 (2005).
• A. Yildiz and P. R. Selvin. Kinesin: walking, crawling, or sliding along? Trends in Cell Biology 15, 112-120 (2005).
• A. Yildiz, M. Tomishige, R. D. Vale, and P. R. Selvin. Kinesin walks hand-over-hand. Science 303, 676-678 (2004).
• A. Yildiz, J. N. Forkey, S. A. McKinney, T. Ha, Y. E. Goldman, and P. R. Selvin. Myosin V walks hand-over-hand: Single fluorophore imaging with 1.5-nm localization. Science 300, 2061-2065 (2003).

Teaching Honors

• List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by their Students, Fall 1999, Fall 2001, Spring 2002, Spring 2003, Spring 2007, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2021
• National Science Foundation CAREER Award for Outstanding Research/Teaching (2000)

Research Honors

• Grass Imaging Fellowship, Marine Biological Lab, Woods Hole, Mass., Summer 2014.
• Nikon Fellowship, Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts (2010)
• The International Raymond and Beverly Sackler Prize in Biophysics, Tel Aviv University (2006)
• University Scholar, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (2006-2007)
• Faculty Member of the Precision Proteomics Research Theme, Institute for Genomic Biology (2005-present)
• Fellow, American Physical Society (2004-present)
• Physics Sony Faculty Scholar (2004-2007)
• Elected to General council of Biophysical Society (2004)
• Biophysical Society Michael and Kate Barany Award for Young Investigators (2004)
• Beckman Fellow, Center for Advanced Studies, Urbana (Spring 2000)
• Cottrell Scholar, Research Corporation (2000)
• Xerox Award for Outstanding Research (2000)
• Research Innovation Award, Research Corp. (1999)
• Young Fluorescence Investigator Award, Biophysical Society (1999)
• AAAS Mass Media Science and Engineering Fellow (1990)
• Office of Technology Assessment Congressional Fellow Winner (1990)