Molecular Genetic Studies of Volatile Anesthetic Action

My research interests lie in understanding the mechanism of action of volatile inhaled anesthetics.  Despite their clinical use for over 150 years, the sites and mechanisms of action of these essential drugs remain unknown.

In collaboration with the laboratory of Dr. Ralph L. Keil (Dept. of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Penn State College of Medicine, Hershey, PA), my lab is conducting novel molecular genetic studies using the simple eukaryote Saccharomyces cerevisiae (yeast) to investigate the basic cellular processes affected by volatile anesthetics. We find anesthetics inhibit yeast cell division in a manner that strikingly parallels the actions of these compounds on cells of more complex eukaryotes.

Why Yeast?

Yeast is an excellent genetic system for characterizing the mechanism of action of a variety of clinically important compounds, including immunosuppressants and antitumor drugs.  In addition to its short generation time of approximately 90 minutes, yeast is stable as both a haploid and a diploid, facilitating analysis of both dominant and recessive alleles.  It is very well characterized genetically, and has a small genome of about 6,000 genes that has been entirely sequenced.  In addition, many yeast genes are homologous to those of humans.  Yeast cells are easy to culture and relatively inexpensive to maintain.  Further, the Saccharomyces cerevisiae strain presents minimal hazards regarding laboratory safety and waste disposal.  These factors, along with the powerful molecular and genetic techniques available for use with yeast, make it not only an ideal system for characterizing cellular response to anesthetics, but also an ideal system to employ for undergraduate research projects.

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