Jan Hoeijmakers PhD

Jan H.J. Hoeijmakers studied biology at Nijmegen University, the Netherlands. His PhD work on trypanosomes at the University of Amsterdam (supervisor P. Borst), resolved the structure and main function of the kinetoplast DNA network, the curious mitochondrial DNA of these parasites with the shape of a fishnet. In addition, he elucidated the molecular basis for the enigmatic, medically very important mechanism of antigenic variation by which trypanosomes switch each time surface coats and thereby escape from immune surveillance causing sleeping sickness. His discovery of complex gene rearrangements and duplication-transposition of one gene copy to an expression site was one of the first genome rearrangements ever reported and provided the basis for a research line that still continues.