Research
The laboratories in the Department of Pharmacology conduct research in a wide variety of fields and disciplines. A traditional focus of the department has been molecular pharmacology and understanding the mechanisms of signal transduction.
Areas of cell signaling being investigated include:
- Signaling through G-protein coupled receptors (Ross, Smith, Sternweis, Taussig, and Wilkie)
- Nuclear hormone receptors (Kliewer, Mangelsdorf, and Wan)
- Cell-surface receptors involved in axon guidance (Zhang)
- Cell cycle regulation (Luo and Yu)
- Regulation of signaling protein function by covalent modifications (Cobb and Yu)
Other areas of interest include:
- Nuclear and vesicular trafficking (Albanesi, Chook, and Goodman)
- Glycobiology (Lehrman)
- Chemical biology (Corey, Janowski)
- Lipid metabolism and membrane composition (Bharucha, Goodman, and Thorpe)
- Parasite biology (Kliewer, Mangelsdorf, and Philips)
- Stem cell biology (Hamra)
- Evolution of metabolic pathways (Michael)
- Cancer biology (Cobb, Kliewer, Luo, Mangelsdorf, Martinez, Yu, and Wan)
The Department is also home to the Cecil H. and Ida Green Comprehensive Center for Molecular, Computational, and Systems Biology, which is directed by Dr. Rama Ranganathan (Altschuler, Süel, Ranganathan, and Wu). The mission of the Center for Systems Biology is to discover and quantitatively understand the principles of organization in biological systems and how this organization arises through the process of evolution.