Hans Westerhoff
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Westerhoff in 2014
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| Born | Hans Victor Westerhoff (1953-01-14) 14 January 1953 (age 71)[2]
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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| Alma mater | University of Amsterdam (PhD) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Biological thermodynamics, Systems biology[1] |
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| Thesis | Mosaic non-equilibrium thermodynamics and (the control of) biological free-energy transduction (1983) |
| Doctoral advisor | Karel van Dam[2][3] |
| Website | www |
Hans Victor Westerhoff (born 14 January 1953)[2] is a Dutch biologist and biochemist who is professor of synthetic systems biology at the University of Amsterdam[4] and AstraZeneca professor of systems biology at the University of Manchester.[1] Currently he is a Chair of AstraZeneca and a director of the Manchester Centre for Integrative Systems Biology.[5][6]
Westerhoff was born in Amsterdam, Netherlands. He was educated at the University of Amsterdam where he was awarded a PhD in 1983 for investigations of non-equilibrium thermodynamics and the control of biological thermodynamics supervised by Karel van Dam.[2] In 1996 he succeeded Ad Stouthamer as professor of microbiology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.[7]
At the beginning of his career Westerhoff worked in the area of non-equilibrium thermodynamics in relation to biological energy transduction.[8][9] His work on this topic led to a book written with Karel Van Dam.[10]
After being a coauthor of one of the first experimental papers to stimulate interest in metabolic control analysis[11] and participating in the group that proposed a harmonized terminology,[12] Westerhoff moved progressively towards working on multi-enzyme systems as his major activity, starting with an analysis of the effect of enzyme activity on metabolite concentrations.[13] He published many papers in this area, of which one may note an analysis of the control of regulatory cascades,[14] analysqis of glycolytic oscilations in yeast,[15] and showing that the in vivo behaviour of Trypanosoma brucei agreed with the kinetic properties of the glycolytic enzymes.[16]
Westerhoff and colleagues discovered magainin in the African clawed frog which helps it fight against bacteria.[17] In December 1996 he and his group discovered a nitric-oxide reductaseofParacoccus denitrificans.[18]
In conjunction with many other workers Westerhoff used a community approach to construct a consensus yeast metabolic network[19] and subsequently applied the same approach to human metabolism.[20]
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