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Johan Elf

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Johan Elf
Johan Elf in 2017
Born
Per Johan Sven Elf

(1975-05-08) May 8, 1975 (age 49)
Motala, Sweden
NationalitySwedish
Alma materUppsala University (PhD)
SpouseKristin Elf (m. 2001; div. 2022)
Children2
AwardsGustafsson Prize in 2010 Hjärnäpplet in 2022 Norblad-Ekstrand Medal 2021 Longitude Prize on AMR 2024
Scientific career
FieldsBiophysics
InstitutionsUppsala University
Thesis Intracellular flow and fluctuations  (2004)
Doctoral advisorMåns Ehrenberg
Websiteelflab.icm.uu.se

Per Johan Sven Elf, (born May 8, 1975) is a Swedish biophysicist. He is professor of physical biology at Uppsala universitet and Wallenberg Scholar Archived 2021-01-22 at the Wayback Machine.

Biography

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Johan Elf was born in 1975, in Molala, a small city in the Sweden. He studied at Uppsala University, where he obtained an MSc in Engineering in 2000 and a PhD in Biotechnology in 2004 on stochasticity in intracellular processes. His PhD supervisor was of Prof. Mans Ehrenberg. In 2005 he moved to Harvard University where he developed single molecule methods to study transcription factor kinetics in living cells under the supervision of Prof. Xiaoliang Sunney Xie. In 2008 he became senior lecturer in bioinformatics at Uppsala University and in 2013 he was appointed professor of physical biology. As of 2016 he is a member of the Chemistry class at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.[1]

Elf is a member of the board of Uppsala University and the board of the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences

Research

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Elf studies dynamic processes in bacterial cells using sensitive optical methods. His main contributions are in algorithms for spatially-dependent stochastic simulations,[2] single molecule methods for studying molecular search kinetics in living cells,[3][4][5] optical pooled screening [6][7] and antibiotic susceptibility testing.[8]

Companies

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In 2017 Elf founded Astrego Diagnostics AB [9] together with Özden Baltekin and Ove Öhman. The company develops rapid antibiotic susceptibility tests based on the academic work[8] from the Elf lab. Elf left the company in 2022 when it was acquired by Sysmex Corporation. Sysmex Astrego was awarded the 8M£ Longitude Prize on AMR in 2024.

In 2022 Elf co-founded Bifrost Biosystems (Boston, MA) with Johan Paulsson, Paul Blainey and George Church.

References

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  1. ^ "Kungl. Vetenskapsakademien". www.kva.se. Retrieved 28 September 2017.
  2. ^ Elf J, Ehrenberg M (December 2004). "Spontaneous separation of bi-stable biochemical systems into spatial domains of opposite phases". Systems Biology. 1 (2): 230–6. doi:10.1049/sb:20045021 (inactive 7 December 2024). PMID 17051695.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of December 2024 (link)
  3. ^ Elf J, Li GW, Xie XS (May 2007). "Probing transcription factor dynamics at the single-molecule level in a living cell". Science. 316 (5828): 1191–4. Bibcode:2007Sci...316.1191E. doi:10.1126/science.1141967. PMC 2853898. PMID 17525339.
  4. ^ Hammar P, Leroy P, Mahmutovic A, Marklund EG, Berg OG, Elf J (June 2012). "The lac repressor displays facilitated diffusion in living cells". Science. 336 (6088): 1595–8. Bibcode:2012Sci...336.1595H. doi:10.1126/science.1221648. PMID 22723426. S2CID 21351861.
  5. ^ Marklund, et al. (2020). "DNA surface exploration and operator bypassing during target search" (PDF). Nature. 583 (7818): 858–861. Bibcode:2020Natur.583..858M. doi:10.1038/s41586-020-2413-7. PMID 32581356. S2CID 220049852.
  6. ^ Elf, et al. (2014). "Phenotypic characterization and in situ genotyping of a library of genetically different cells". Patent Application. WO2016007063A1.
  7. ^ Lawson MJ, Camsund D, Larsson J, Baltekin O, Fange D, Elf J (2017). "In situ genotyping of a pooled strain library after characterizing complex phenotypes". Molecular Systems Biology. 13 (10): 947. doi:10.15252/msb.20177951. PMC 5658705. PMID 29042431.
  8. ^ a b Baltekin Ö, Boucharin A, Tano E, Andersson DI, Elf J (August 2017). "Antibiotic susceptibility testing in less than 30 min using direct single-cell imaging". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 114 (34): 9170–9175. Bibcode:2017PNAS..114.9170B. doi:10.1073/pnas.1708558114. PMC 5576829. PMID 28790187.
  9. ^ "Astrego Diagnostics - Develops the fastest antibiotic susceptibility test". Astrego Diagnostics. Retrieved 2021-06-12.
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