Michael Xi Zhu

Research Description:

Research Interests:

Capacitative Ca2+ influx is an event following the intracellular Ca2+ mobilization in response to the stimulation of many cell surface receptors. It is proposed that the Ca2+ influx channels are formed by proteins homologous to the Drosophila transient receptor potential (trp) gene. During the last three years, we have cloned six mammalian trp genes. Some of these genes have been expressed in heterologous systems and shown to behave like voltage-independent Ca2+ or non-selective cation channels. Our goal is to characterize the mammalian TRP proteins in detail. This includes expressing the channels in various cells and studying their electrophysiological properties, their regulation mechanisms, their association with other proteins, and their sensitivity to various drugs. It also includes molecular identifying and cloning of more TRP-related proteins and studying their functions. Since transcripts for TRPs are present in brain at relatively high abundance, we also like to learn the roles of TRP proteins in neuronal tissues by studying their distribution in various regions of brain and the effect of TRP knock-out in brain function in mice.