TSRI Faculty Interests

Pain

Boger, Dale  
works on the total synthesis of biologically active natural products using the tools of organic synthesis to identify, imitate, understand, exploit, and sometimes surpass what nature provides.

Chun, Jerold  
is interested in the study of lysophospholipid signaling in neural and systems biology, chromosomal aneuploidy in the nervous system, and disease related studies with a Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience approach.

Cravatt, Benjamin  
studies the action and regulation of chemical messengers, particularly the fatty acid amides, which mediate physiological phenomena like pain sensation, sleep, and thermoregulation; he designs and uses chemical probes for "active site proteomics," the global analysis of protein function.

Getzoff, Elizabeth  
aims to characterize functionally important protein conformational states by coupling crystallography, spectroscopy, molecular biology and computational analyses, and to apply that knowledge to protein and inhibitor design for key biological processes, including photoactivity, electron transfer, and enzyme catalysis.

Patapoutian, Ardem  
studies the molecular basis of the sense of touch by using genomics, imaging, and transgenic technologies to identify and characterize ion channel proteins involved in the perception of distinct thermal, mechanical, and chemical stimuli.

Stevens, Raymond  
uses crystallography and biochemistry to probe the structure and function of molecules involved in neurotransmission and neurochemistry, seeking to understand how neuronal cells communicate at the molecular level and to create new molecules that affect neuronal signal transduction and recognition.