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Patch Clamp
Cryo-EM
Contact info
Photo Gallery
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Liguo Wang
Yixuan Zhang
Mingyu Ye
Poojitha Narasimhan
Pujitha Weerakoon
Farah Laiwalla
Xiaohui (Frank) Li
Teresa Giraldez
Kate Klemic
Shumin Bian
Puey Ounjai
Lalitha Venkataramanan
Jie Zheng
Leon Islas
Qiu-Xing Jiang
Ted Cimmins
Nathan Shoppa
Rick Ayer
Rajesh Mathur
Stefan H. Heinemann
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| David Chester
david.chester@yale.edu
As a native of Connecticut, David came to the lab in 1999 after spending 3 years as a faculty member in the Natural Science Department at Fresno Pacific University in Fresno, CA. Prior to to that, he was an Assistant Professor in the Biomolecular Structure Analysis Center at the University of Connecticut Health Center. Throughout his academic career, David has been interested in the structure and function of membrane proteins. As a biochemist/biophysicist by training his research has involved a number of 'tools' to include x-ray and neutron diffraction on reconstituted membranes, calorimetry, fluoresence and diffusional dynamics. He is currently using Cryo-Electron Microscopy approaches to examine the structure and function of IP3 Receptors and Ion Channels reconstituted into lipid vesicles. In addition, he has been developing surface chemistry approaches to facilitate structure experiments which would facilitate autimated EM data collection and analysis. Outside the lab, David is the Vice President of the Crossroads Rescue Mission in Meriden, CT. which meets the needs of Homeless and Basic Needs challenged individuals within central Connecticut. He is also strongly involved in his local church as both a teacher and preacher. In addition, he has just recently completed writing a book, "A Chord in Time", which life as a function of faith through trials.
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Hideki Shigematsu
Hideki was born in Yokohama, Japan and got a Ph.D at Tokyo Institute of Technology in a field of Biotechnology at 1999. He once worked at pharmaceutical company for X-ray crystallography of membrane proteins and then moved back to Tokyo Institute of Technology as a postdoc. He was promoted to be an assistant professor at there. He moved to National Institute of Physiological Sciences in Okazaki, Japan as a researcher and started structural biology of ion channels using cryoelectron microscopy. At there, he was involved in the development of phase plate for electron microscope and applied it for single particle reconstruction of channel proteins. He joined the Lab to solve the structure of ion channels in lipid membrane hideki.shigematsu@yale.edu
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Yunhui Liu
Yunhui Liu is from Beijing Jiaotong University , China . She got a Ph.D. degree in computer science. She is now studying CUDA GPU programming and developing parallel algorithms on GPU to do the 3D structure reconstruction of proteins. yunhui.liu@yale.edu
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Yi Chen
Yi was born in Fuzhou, China. She received her bachelor of medicine (M.D)
from Peking University in 2006. After several lab rotations on structural
biology and neuroscience, she joined the Sigworth lab in 2007 as a PhD
candidate in cellular and molecular physiology. Her thesis project aims at
localizing the voltage sensor for a Kv1 channel in different functional
states. She is utilizing the developing method of random
spherically-constrained (RSC) single-particle electron cryo-microscopy for
her work.
yi.chen@yale.edu
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Andrew Barthel
Andrew Barthel is from Shoreview , Minnesota and earned a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering (BSEE) from the University of Notre Dame. He is currently developing new computational algorithms to help determine the structure of membrane proteins, and also tutors students in math and sciences. In his free time he is an advocate for pedestrian safety in New Haven , enjoys running and biking, and is an avid reader. His research interest is in novel applications of statistical methods in biological systems and studies.
andrew.barthel@yale.edu
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Youshan Yang
Youshan Yang joined the lab in May 1992. He is from Hangzhou , Zhejiang Province, China. Youshan majored in applied mathematics and has a PhD in biomedical engineering from Zhejiang University. Presently he is studying voltage-gated potassium channels and Ca++ and Na+ gated potassium channels. He uses patch-clamp techniques to characterize channel behavior and kinetics at the levels of macroscopic currents or single channels.
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Yangyang Yan
Yangyang Yan is a research associate at Sigworth lab. She has been in the lab since 1993. "My main work is in molecular biology and biochemicals. Specifically I am responsible for stable cell lines, cell cultures, protein purification, PCR, site-directed mutagenesis, in vitro transcription of cRNA, co-immunoprecipitation, and western-blotting. I also prepare Xenopus oocytes, microinject them with cRNA, and do recordings with a two-microelectrode voltage clamp setup to study voltage-gated potassium channels and also Ca++ and Na+ gated potassium channels."
yangyang.yan@yale.edu
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Former lab members | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
Liguo Wang
Liguo was born in Beijing, and got dual BS degrees from Tsinghua University. After working as a process engineer in China for three years, he came to Cornell University as a Ph.D student, majoring in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering with a minor in Computer Science. After completing his PhD he joined the lab in 2003. He is interested in the determination of 3D structures of membrane proteins using single-particle electron cryo-microscopy (cryo-EM). He’d like to work on both the experimental and theoretical sides to push the resolution of protein structures to an atomic level.
LW59@cornell.edu
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Yixuan Zhang
Yixuan Zhang was born in Kaifeng, China. She got her M.D. degree from Jiangsu University in China. She joined the lab in March 2008 and is working as a postdoc fellow in the lab. She is learning laboratory techniques on molecular and cellular biology. Her main work involves the development of expression constructs for calcium- and voltage-gated channels (BK channels), and their expression and purification for structural studies.
yixuanzhang2008@hotmail.com
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Mingyu Ye
Mingyu is a visiting PhD student from Shanghai Tongji University, working on the structure and function of conotoxins. His thesis work includes purifying venom components, structurally characterizing interesting toxins, preparing toxins, and functionally screening toxins’ potential targets with electrophysiological techniques. The long term goal of his research is to identify potential therapeutic candidates for the treatment of intractable pain and to develop tools for neuroscience applications.
mingyuye@hotmail.com
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Pujitha Weerakoon
Pujitha obtained his B.S.E. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Lafayette College, PA in 2004. He earned his Ph.D. from Yale in 2009 in Engineering and Applied Science with a focus in mixed-mode integrated sensor design for biomedical applications. For his thesis, he designed and tested the first integrated patch-clamp circuit under Fred Sigworth and Eugenio Culurciello. After graduating, he joined the lab as a postdoctoral associate to commercialize the integrated patch-clamp system he developed for his Ph.D. work. He joined Boston Scientific's neuromodulation division as an IC design engineer in 2010.
mailpuji@gmail.com
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Two-Channel Patch-clamp System on a chip |
Kate Klemic
Kate was a member of the lab from 1998-2007 developing new technologies for studying ion channels. She received the B. Sc. Degree in physics from Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, in 1989 and the Ph.D. in Biophysics/Bioengineering from Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH in 1998. She worked at IBM Research from 1989 to 1991 in III-IV semiconductor microelectronic research and Currently, she is a scientific consultant for Warner Instruments, Hamden, CT, working to commercialize some of those technologies.
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Teresa Giraldez
Teresa was a member of the lab from 2002 to 2005. She was born in Madrid, Spain, and she studied Chemistry and Biochemistry at Oviedo University, where she subsequently obtained a PhD in Biochemistry. Her project in the lab was the study of conformational changes of large conductance calcium- and voltage-gated channels (BK), combining patch-clamp and fluorescence microscopy techniques.
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Shumin Bian
Shumin Bian was a member of the lab from 2003-2007 working on the biochemistry of ion channels, particularly using cryoEM for structure-functional study. .
shumin.bian@yale.edu
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Farah Laiwalla
Farah is from Karachi, Pakistan. She pursued Electrical and Computer engineering and premedical studies as an undergraduate at Lafayette college in Easton, PA. She worked on the integrated patch-clamp project and is now a student in an MD/PhD program at Brown University.
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Xiaohui (Frank) Li
From Henan Province, China, Xiaohui Li joined the lab in the summer of 2001 and graduated with a PhD in Electrical Engineering in 2006. His thesis work was on the planar patch clamp project; he was also a member of Professor Mark Reed's lab.
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Puey Ounjai
Puey was a visiting student from Thailand. His project was to use CryoEM to determine the 3D structure of Bacillus Thuringiensis Cry4B toxin in the membrane. Puey earned a B.S. in Biotechnology from King Mongkut's Institute of Technology in Bangkok. He is presently a PhD student in Molecular Genetics and Genetic Engineering at Mahidol Unversity in Nakompathom, Thailand.
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Lalitha Venkataramanan Lalitha was an Electrical Engineering student who did her PhD work with us, graduating in 1998. Her thesis involved analyzing ion channel data using hidden Markov models; her advisors were Profs. Sigworth (Physiology) and Kuc (EE). Lalitha is currently a senior research scientist at Schlumberger Doll Research in Ridgefield, CT. She is program manager of the measurement interpretation program in the Math and Modeling department. It may seem to be a long way from ion channels to NMR in oil wells, but in the past few years she has done very well, working on inversion algorithms for nuclear magnetic resonance data obtained downhole. She is currently working on answer products from permanent downhole measurements. She has given a few invited talks at universities and is the author or co-author of 12 peer-reviewed journal articles and 3 patents.
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Jie Zheng
Jie grew up in Northern China and went to college at Peking University. He came to Yale as a PhD student at the end of 1992 and joined the Sigworth Lab in 1993. For his thesis research Jie used single-channel kinetic analysis to investigate contribution of the channel pore to voltage-dependent activation of Shaker potassium channels. He graduated in 1998 and is now a faculty member at the University of California at Davis Department of Physiology and Membrane Biology where he continues to study ion channel gating mechanisms.
http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/physiology/faculty/zheng.html
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Leon Islas
Leon was a graduate student in the lab from 1994 to 2000. He worked on some aspects of voltage-dependent gating in Shaker and other related channels. He is now an Associate Profesor at the National University of Mexico (UNAM) were he continues to study the molecular biophysics of ion channels
http://canales.facmed.unam.mx/group.html
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Qiu-Xing Jiang
I was a graduate student in the Sigworth lab from 1997-2002. In this period, I started with a cryoEM project on Shaker K channel, involved in the initial proof-of-principle experiments for spherical reconstruction, and obtained the cryoEM reconstruction of IP3 receptor. Currently I am running a laboratory at UT Southwestern Medical Center, and my research program focuses on the structure and function of ion channels as well as intracellular signaling complexes.
http://www.utsouthwestern.edu/QiuxingJiang
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Ted Cummins
After graduating from the Sigworth lab, Ted did a post-doctoral
fellowship with Steve Waxman in Neurology at Yale. He was promoted to Assistant Professor in Neurology before moving to the Indiana
University School of Medicine in Indianapolis Indiana. Ted is now an
Associate Professor at IUSM. Ted’s main interests are understanding
the biophysical properties of ion channels and determining the role of
ion channels in neurological diseases. Ion channel mutations have been
linked to numerous disorders of excitability including pain, skeletal
muscle non-distrophic myotonias, epilepsy and cardiac arrhythmias. His lab uses electrophysiological, molecular biological and computer
modeling techniques to study how specific voltage-gated ion channels
contribute to excitability and to neurological diseases. We are also
investigating modulation of sodium channels by numerous factors and the molecular determinants of sodium channel pharmacology. The long-term goals of Dr. Cummins’ research are to develop a better understanding of the roles that ion channels in play in pathophysiological conditions and to develop better strategies for the treatment of disorders that involve ion channels.
http://pharmtox.iusm.iu.edu/faculty/theodore-r-cummins-ph-d/
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Nathan Schoppa
My lab at the University of Colorado School of Medicine is interested in the mechanisms used by the brain to process olfactory cues. We focus on two structures, the olfactory bulb and the piriform cortex, asking basic questions about what neurons are present, how they are connected, and how groups of neurons work to generate a particular output for a circuit. Methodologically, we combine electrophysiological and optical recordings in brain slices, optogenetic approaches for photoactivation of neurons, as well as anatomical and immunohistochemical studies. Specific current research interests include the neurons associated with glomerular structures in the bulb. Because of its very compact nature, as well as its clear link to function, the glomerulus makes an especially attractive model for understanding how small circuits in the brain work. In addition, we are interested in cross-circuit interactions between the bulb and cortex, both signaling from bulb to cortex as well as cortex back to bulb. *Nathan Schoppa was a graduate student in the Sigworth lab from 1988 to 1995.
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Rick Ayer
While I was in Fred's lab, I worked on inactivation of Shaker K channel mutants.
My current "lab" link is www.sutter.com
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Rajesh Mathur
Rajesh worked as a research associate scientist from January 1993 until July 1996. He had previously received a Ph.D degree in Neurochemistry (CMC Hospital, India) and then trained as a molecular biologist in Prof. Sherman Weissman’s laboratory (Genetics, Yale Medical School). He spent his time in Fred’s lab by creating and analyzing the effects of different types of mutations in S3-S4 linker region of the Shaker K+ Channel in Xenopus oocytes by two-electrode voltage-clamp.
Currently, he lives with his family in Vancouver, BC, Canada.
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Stefan H. Heinemann
Stefan H. Heinemann was born in Goslar, Germany, studied physics in Gottingen, and performed a diploma project in the laboratory of Erwin Neher at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Gottingen, Germany. From 1987 to 1988 he was member of the Sigworth lab at Yale to work on his PhD thesis on open-channel noise of gramicidin channels and molecular modeling. Back in Gottingen, he received a PhD in physics (1990) and collaborated with Walter Stühmer on voltage-gated ion channels. After a postdoctoral period at Stanford University in the lab of Richard Aldrich (1992), he became head of a Max Planck Research Unit in Jena, Germany; from 1998 on he was associate professor for Molecular and Cellular Physiology at the University Hospital Jena. Since 2008 he is head of the Biophysics Department at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena with research interests in voltage-gated ion channels, neurotoxins, as well as heme and ROS signaling.
http://www.biophysik.uni-jena.de/
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