TSRI Faculty Interests

Neurobiology

Baldwin, Kristin  
studies the sense of smell by genetically visualizing the neural circuits of the mouse olfactory system and uses mouse cloning and stem cell technology to investigate the molecular mechanisms that govern neural circuit formation and function throughout the nervous system.

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.

Cline, Hollis  
studies the analysis of the activity-dependent control of cell proliferation, neuronal development and circuit formation in the visual system using gene transfer, in vivo imaging and electrophysiological techniques.

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.

Crossin, Kathryn  
focuses on understanding the signaling capabilities of various cell adhesion molecules on the cell's plasma membrane, particularly the neural cell adhesion molecule, N-CAM, and its ability to signal hippocampal neural precursor cells to become neurons rather that astroglia and to activate the transcription factor NFkB in astrocytes.

Cunningham, Bruce  
studies the detailed properties of cell surface glycoproteins that play critical roles in neural development, particularly cell adhesion molecules (CAMs), which bind cells together and generate signals that determine a cell's developmental destiny.

Edelman, Gerald  
examines several areas related to nervous system development and neural function, including cell-cell interactions during embyronic development, the role of cell adhesion molecules in neural plasticity, the molecular genetics of connectional defects in the nervous system, and transcriptional regulation and translational control in eukaryotic cells.

Gruol, Donna  
examines the pathways and mechanisms involved in neuronal signaling in the mammalian central nervous system (CNS), developmental expression of signaling pathways, and the neuroadaptive mechanisms through which CNS disease and drugs alter neuronal signaling and viability.

Jegla, Timothy  
aims to define the molecular pathways through which potassium channels regulate neuronal signaling.

Mueller, Ulrich  
focuses on the genes and the gene mutations that contribute to the pathology of Usher syndrome, other human diseases related to mechanosensory perception, and central nervous system diseases

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.

Stowers, Lisa  
studies the ligands, neurons, and brain nuclei that initiate social behavior using molecular genetics and genomics; her work is determining the rules that generate the information coding of neuronal networks.