Arek's Bio
Arek Kulczyk earned his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in the UK. At the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, he worked on NMR structure determination of zinc-finger (Zf) domains from DNA ligase III (DL3) and poly-ADP ribose polymerase 1 (PARP-1), the two medically important proteins involved in DNA repair; proteins that function by binding to breaks in DNA phosphodiester backbone. Arek determined a structure of the Zf from DL3 and characterized its interaction with DNA (Kulczyk et al., 2004, JMB). After earning his doctorate degree, he moved to Boston, MA and began postdoctoral studies in the field of DNA replication at Harvard University. Under mentorship of Charles Richardson and in collaboration with Antoine van Oijen, he developed novel single-molecule techniques for monitoring enzymatic activities of the replication proteins (Duderstadt et al., 2016, Mol. Cell.; Geertsema & Kulczyk et al., 2014, PNAS; Loparo & Kulczyk et al., 2011, PNAS; Kulczyk et al., 2010, JVE). In 2013, Arek became an Instructor in Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School in Boston; the junior faculty appointment that provided an opportunity to establish an independent research program. Arek determined a structure of the 650 kDa bacteriophage T7 replisome using single-particle cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM). The structure provides the first detailed snapshot of the entire replisome and reveals fundamental molecular mechanisms for coordination of leading- and lagging-strand synthesis (Kulczyk et al., 2017, PNAS; Kulczyk et al., 2012, PNAS; Kulczyk et al., 2012, JBC). In September 2017, Arek joined the Institite for Quantitative Biomedicine and the Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology at Rutgers University as an Assistant Professor. The primary research goal of the Kulczyk Laboratory is to integrate structural approaches, in particular single-particle cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM), single-molecule techniques and novel correlative light and electron microscopy (CLEM) methods to study DNA replication and repair in human mitochondria.