Dr. Palmer is trying to identify the genetic differences that cause some people to be more sensitive than others to the effects of drugs. We can identify genes that cause…
Schizophrenia is a common and severe mental illness affecting 1% of the US population. Despite extensive studies, however, the genetic contribution to this illness is not yet clearly elucidated. The results from this proposal may provide important evidence from transgenic mice to show how genetic...
Parkinson’s disease affects more than 1.5 million people in the United States alone. This number is expected to increase with our aging population. Until now, the cause of dopamine neuron degeneration in Parkinson’s disease is still far from clear and there are no therapeutic interven...
Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the leading cause of adult onset dementia, is now the fourth major cause of death in the developed world after heart disease, cancer and stroke. It is estimated that 4.5 million people in the United States of America are affected with the disease. Affected individu...
The success of gene therapy depends on efficient gene delivery into target cells. Viral vectors, in the forms of adenoviruses, have provided one potential means for the delivery of gene therapy. However, the potency of adenoviral agents is determined directly by their capability of infecting targ...
Olfactory deficits are common in disorders that affect cognitive function, such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, schizophrenia and depression. In some cases, these deficits are among the first signs of the onset of these disorders or are predict...
Neuronal diversity is a hallmark of the vertebrate nervous system. Dr. Sharma’s goal is to understand how neuronal diversity is generated in the vertebrate embryonic spinal cord. Vertebrate genomes have a limited number of genes. Mechanisms that can amplify the number of pretein insoforms e...
In any given year, over 7% of the U.S. population (nearly 15 million people) have social phobia, otherwise known as social anxiety disorder, making it the most common anxiety disorder, and the third most common psychiatric disorder. It begins early in life, lasts chronically, and causes severe fu...
The vestibular labyrinth is the portion of the inner ear concerned with balance and equilibrium. It monitors the three-dimensional angular and linear forces acting on the head and conveys the information to the brain, where it is combined with vision and other sensory information, and used in suc...
The prion diseases are transmissible neurodegenerative disorders linked to the accumulation of an aberrantly folded prion protein (PrP). Current thinking holds that quality control mechanisms within the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), where secretory proteins enter following synthesis, act to either ...
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