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Leonard Kaczmarek, PhD

Professor of Pharmacology and of Cellular And Molecular Physiology
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About

Titles

Professor of Pharmacology and of Cellular And Molecular Physiology

Biography

Dr. Kaczmarek carried out his undergraduate and graduate work at the University of London. He continued his research career at the University of California Los Angeles (where he learned electrophysiology), the Free University of Brussels, Belgium (where he learned how to make neural network models) and the California Institute of Technology (where he made the fundamental discovery that phosphorylation state changes ionic currents) before joining the Yale faculty in 1981. The Kaczmarek group studies biochemical changes in neurons that result in prolonged changes in the behavior of an animal or detect specific patterns of sensory inputs. He is well-known for discovering the genes for several ion channel proteins that are directly responsible for the excitability of nerve cells. His work was the first to demonstrate directly that rapid changes in phosphorylation state of ion channels occur in vivo in response to changes in the animal’s environment. Currently his lab is focused on the way mutations in these proteins may be responsible for several forms of intellectual disability and autism. He has been very fortunate to have many exceptionally talented pre- and postdoctoral trainees in his laboratory. Thirty-two of the students and postdocs from the Kaczmarek laboratory have gone on to hold tenure-track faculty positions at major institutions including Brown University, Yale University, UCSF, UCSD, Vanderbilt and many more.

Appointments

Education & Training

PhD
University of London (1971)

Research

Overview

Our laboratory has investigates the role of potassium channels, as well as other classes of ion channels, in the short-term and long-term regulation of neuronal excitability. Our group was the first to demonstrate directly, using purified enzymes, that excitability of neurons is regulated by cyclic AMP-dependent protein kinase, protein kinase C and tyrosine phosphatases. As part of this work we isolated the genes for over fourteen novel ion channels and were the first to identify the “two-pore” family of potassium channels. Among the channels that our group cloned and characterized are Kv3.1b channel, which is required for high-frequency firing in many neurons and the Slack and Slick genes that underlie Na+-activated K+ channels. Our work was the first to show directly that rapid changes in the phosphorylation state of ion channels and in the synthesis of new channels occur in vivo in response to changes in an animal’s environment. Most recently, we have found that the Slack protein interacts with the Fragile X Mental Retardation Protein FMRP and that human mutations in Slack produce very severe epilepsy and developmental delay. This is now a major focus of our laboratory.

Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)

Ion Channels; Learning; Memory; Neurosciences; Pharmacology; Physiology

Research at a Glance

Yale Co-Authors

Frequent collaborators of Leonard Kaczmarek's published research.

Publications

2024

2023

2022

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