BIOPHYSICS GROUP
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amministratore
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last modified
16 Aug, 2010 11:44 AM
The research group is composed by:
· RISPOLI GIORGIO Associate Professor
· BENEDUSI MASCIA Technical Assistant
· AQUILA MARCO Ph.D. student
· MILANI ALBERTO · INFANTI MARTINA
. VIA ELEONORA
Students - COREGGIOLI MANUELA - FASOLI ANNA - MANTOVANI CRISTINA | |
| Research group interests: SENSORY TRANSDUCTION AND MEMBRANE ION TRANSPORT We are interested in the biophysical mechanisms underlying sensory transduction and the ion transport across the plasma membrane of sensory cells, that is responsible for the generation of the receptor potential. The main projects that are currently in progress in our lab regard the mechanism of phototransduction in vertebrate photoreceptors and its Ca2+-regulation, Ca2+ dynamics in photoreceptors and in hair cells, the ion transport through the retinal exchanger and through the voltage- and the calcium- dependent conductances in both sensory cells. In the last years we also started a project focused on the mechanism of ion transport generated by peptides (native or synthetic) inserted in cell membranes under physiological conditions. This project has the goal to understand the elementary mechanisms taking place in large proteins (i.e. channels, exchanger and pumps) as ion selectivity, transport regulation, pore formation, and so on. The techniques we currently use are the patch clamp, the flash photolysis of caged compounds and the fast fluorescence Ca2+ imaging; we also develop mathematical models implemented in Mathcad environment of all the mechanisms under study. |
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