Paul Slesinger
e-mail: slesinger@salk.edu |
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Our lab studies“molecular gates” that regulate the movement of ions in and out of a cell. The flow of these charged particles, such as potassium or calcium, is critical for cellular communication, from the brain to the heart. Disruption of this flow has been implicated with a variety of ailments, including Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, hypoglycemia, mobility disorders and cardiac arrhythmias.
We have been trying to understand how the structure of ion channels affects their ability to transport ions. Through these studies, our group has described the molecular mechanism by which ion channels discriminate among different types of ions, identified regions of the ion channel that are involved in opening and closing, pinpointed segments of the ion channel that interact with anesthetics, and determined the functional consequence of a single amino acid mutation found in human diseases.
Paul Slesinger received his Ph.D. in Neurobiology from the University of California, San Francisco. He is the recipient of an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship and the McNight Scholars award in Neuroscience.
