Transduction Channels in Sensory Cells (eBook)

Stephan Frings is professor of molecular physiology at Heidelberg University (Germany). Following studies of biology at the University of Konstanz, he completed his Ph.D. in animal physiology in the lab of Anthony D.C. Macknight at the University of Otago, Dunedin (New Zealand). After returning to Germany he worked on transduction channels in olfactory sensory neurons with Bernd Lindemann at the University of the Saarland and with U. Benjamin Kaupp at the Jülich Research Center before moving to Heidelberg University. His group is interested in signal transduction mechanisms of sensory cells, particularly in the regulation of transduction channels. Jonathan Bradley is an associate of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, in the laboratory of King-Wai Yau, studying olfactory sensory physiology and signal transduction. He was born in New York and completed his B.S. in biochemistry at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, followed by a Ph. D. in neuroscience at the California Institute of Technology, under the supervision of Kai Zinn. He was a post-doctoral fellow at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris (France), where he worked with Philippe Ascher, before returning to the USA. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with his wife Nathalie and two children, Adrien and Morgane.

I. Mechanotransduction
The molecular basis of touch sensation as modeled in Caenorhabditis elegans
Transduction channels in hair cells

II. Chemotransduction
Acid-sensing ion channels
Chemosensory transduction in Caenorhabditis elegans
Vertebrate olfactory signal transduction and the interplay of excitatory anionic and cationic currents
Transduction channels in the vomeronasal organ
Transduction mechanisms in taste cells

III. Phototransduction
Inverteberate phototransduction: multimolecular signaling complexes and the role of TRP and TRPL channels
The transduction channels of rod and cone photoreceptors

IV. Complex senses of the body
Ion channels and thermotransduction
Pain transduction: gating and modulation of ion channels
Transduction and transmission in electroreceptor organs