Cell Signalling

BIOGRAPHY

ACADEMIC POSITION:
Professor of Pharmacology, Laboratory of Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience

EDUCATION AND BACKGROUND:
Annette C Dolphin received her BA in Natural Sciences (Biochemistry) from the University of Oxford and her PhD at the Institute of Psychiatry in London. She held postdoctoral fellowships at the College de France in Paris, and at Yale University, before returning to a post at the National Institute for Medical Research. She then took up a lectureship at St George's Hospital Medical School, London, and was appointed to the chair of Pharmacology at the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine, London, in 1990. Following the merger with University College London in 1997, she moved to the UCL campus.

RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Her group is interested in the properties of voltage-dependent calcium channels, their modulation and expression in the nervous system. Utilising molecular biological, biochemical, immunocytochemical and electrophysiological techniques they examine how voltage-dependent calcium channels are assembled in the membrane, and are interested in assigning specific properties to particular regions of the hetero-oligomeric channel complex. Of particular interest is the mechanism of modulation of certain neuronal calcium channels by G protein activation, as this is a likely mechanism for the ubiquitous and highly important process of presynaptic inhibition of transmitter release.