Functional interaction between molecules and behaviors in healthy and diseased brain.
Our central goal is to understand actions of molecules in the brain in the context of synapses, circuits and behaviors. Specifically, we are using a combination of proteomic, molecular, cellular, genetic, electrophysiological, circuit and behavioral approaches to identify molecules and pathways critical for synapse development and function, gain deep mechanistic insights into their actions in vitro and in vivo, and eventually apply the knowledge at the molecular and cellular levels to tackle complex questions such as behavior and disease.
We are a Synapse and Neural Circuit Research Laboratory.
Principal Investigator
Dr. Lu received his Ph.D. degree from New York University (Ph.D., 2006). His graduate study, in the laboratory of Dr. Edward Ziff, was on biochemical characterization of neuronal glutamate receptors and their interacting proteins. He did his postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Dr. Roger Nicoll at the University of California, San Francisco, where he combined electrophysiological and single-cell genetic approaches to study excitatory synaptic transmission.