Meyer B. Jackson

Department:

Neuroscience

Education:

Ph.D. in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

Research Description:

I have worked at the interface between biophysics and neuroscience for nearly 40 years. My research incorporates physical ideas into my investigations of electrical signaling in the nervous system. In many instances I have worked theoretical ideas into my experiments and developed theoretical models that were applied directly to our data. I began patch clamp studies of ion channels as a post–doc in 1978 and began working on exocytosis and neurosecretion about 30 years ago, using patch clamp, amperometry, capacitance recording, and imaging techniques to measure release with high precision in pituitary nerve terminals, endocrine cells, and synapses. This work has focused on fusion pores as a window into fundamental mechanisms. My work on exocytosis has incorporated theoretical models of the energies of putative fusion intermediates and the rates of transitions between these intermediates. I have been studying neural circuitry in brain slices with voltage imaging techniques for over 20 years. We have studied the circuitry of the hippocampus, piriform cortex, spinal cord, and superior colliculus. We have developed genetically encoded voltage sensors (Wang et al., 2010) and genetic models to express these probes (Bayguinov et al., 2017). These voltage sensors are enabling us to take our population level studies of circuitry with voltage sensitive dyes to the level of distinct types of neurons at the single cell level.

Research Key Words:

Biophysics of Synaptic Transmission, Neural Circuitry, Exocytosis, Voltage Imaging

Link to Publications