Sam Johnson, PhD

Education

Scientific experience

• Director, Light Microscopy Core Facility, Duke University (March 2006 - present)
• Post-Doctoral Fellow With Tony Hunter, Salk Institute (Jan 2002 - February 2006)
• EMBO practical course - Investigation of live specimens by modern optical methods, Singapore (April 2003)
• Research Scientist with Ascend Biotechnology, University of Bristol, UK (Sept - Dec 2001)
• PhD with Richard Denton, Department of Biochemistry, University of Bristol, UK (1998- 2001). Thesis: The regulation by insulin of pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDH) in adipocytes.
• Howard Hughes Medical Institute Summer Studentship with Erin Schuman, Caltech (1998)
• MRC Summer Studentship with Mariann Bienz, LMB Cambridge, UK (1997)
• BA in Natural Sciences Trinity College, University of Cambridge, UK (1995-1998). Specialization: Biochemistry.

Served on NIH review panels for Shared Instrumentation Grants and High-End Instrumentation - 2008, 2010 and 2011

Teaching

• Principles and Practice of Microscopy - Biology 725
• Microscopy in Cell Biology - Module in CMB 551
• Image analysis, Processing and Visualization
• Microscopy short course

Publications

• Sam A Johnson. Principles of Phase Contrast Microscopy. Biomedical Optical Phase Microscopy and Nanoscopy. ISBN: 9780124158719. 2012
• Audrey S Howell, Natasha S Savage, Sam A Johnson, Indrani Bose, Allison W Wagner, Trevin R Zyla, H. Frederik Nijhout, Michael C Reed, Andrew B Goryachev and Daniel J Lew. Singularity in polarization: rewiring yeast cells to make two buds. Cell. 2009 Nov 13;139(4):731-43.
• Zhongsheng You, Julie M Bailis, Sam A Johnson, Steven Dilworth and Tony Hunter. Rapid Activation of ATM on DNA Flanking Double-Strand breaks. Nature Cell Biol. 2007 Nov;9(11):1311-8..
• Sam A Johnson, Zhongsheng You and Tony Hunter. Visualizing ATM activity in living cells. DNA Repair. 2007 Sep 1;6(9):1277-84.
• Sam A Johnson and Tony Hunter. Kinomics: Methods for deciphering the kinome. Nature Methods 2005 Jan;2(1):17-25.
• Sam A Johnson and Tony Hunter. Phosphoproteomics finds its timing. Nature Biotechnology 2004 Sep;22(9):1093-4.
• Woodring PJ, Meisenhelder J, Johnson SA, Zhou GL, Field J, Shah K, Bladt F, Pawson T, Niki M, Pandolfi PP, Wang JY, Hunter T. c-Abl phosphorylates Dok1 to promote filopodia during cell spreading. Journal of Cell Biology 2004 May 24;165(4):493-503.
• Sam A Johnson and James G McCormack. Pyruvate dehydrogenase. Encyclopedia of Biological Chemistry (Elsevier) 2004 p611-615.
• Sam A Johnson and Richard M Denton. The insulin regulation of Pyruvate Dehydrogenase involves two distinct signalling pathways. Biochemical Journal 2003 369:351-6.

Presentations

• Microscopy for Biomedical Engineers. BME seminar series. February 2013.
• Modern Microscopy Methods. Duke Cardiovascular Research Center. November 2012.
• The Imaging toolkit: Microscopy machines and methods. Immunology department retreat, September 2011
• Current and Desired Capabilities of the Duke Light Microscopy Core Facility. New Directions in Microscopy: Sharper, Deeper, Smarter. Center for Molecular and Biomolecular Imaging, Duke University 2009.
• Development of FRET-based reporters of kinase activity functional in living cells in real-time. EMBO practical course - Investigation of live specimens by modern optical methods, Singapore, 2003.

Poster presentations

• Sam Johnson and Tony Hunter. Imaging ATM activity in living cells. Salk/EMBL Oncogene and Growth Control meeting, San Diego, CA, 2005.
• Sam Johnson and Tony Hunter. Imaging ATM activity in living cells. FASEB Summer Research Conference: Protein Kinases & Protein Phosphorylation, Snowmass, CO, 2005.
• Sam Johnson and Tony Hunter. Imaging the DNA damage response. Tyrosine Phosphorylation and Cell Signaling meeting, San Diego, CA, 2004.
• Sam Johnson and Tony Hunter. Imaging the DNA damage response. DNA Replication and Genome Integrity meeting, San Diego, CA, 2004.
• Sam Johnson, Jin Zhang, Roger Tsien and Tony Hunter. Development of FRET-based reporters of ERK activity functional in living cells in real-time. Tyrosine Phosphorylation and Cell Signaling meeting, San Diego, CA, 2002.
• Woodring PJ, Johnson SA and Hunter T. Dok1 mediates c-Abl dependent alterations of the F-actin cytoskeleton. Tyrosine Phosphorylation and Cell Signaling, San Diego, CA, 2002.