Gordon Fain received his BA in Biology from Stanford University in 1968 and his PhD in Biophysics from Johns Hopkins University in 1973. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris France, he joined the faculty at UCLA in 1975, first in the Department of Ophthalmology in the Medical School and then in the Deplartment of Integrative Biology and Physiology in the College. He is the author of over 120 publications on the physiology of photoreceptores and vertebrate retina and two books, "Molecular and Cellular Physiology of Neurons" (Harvard, Second Edition, 2014) and "Sensory Transduction" (Sinauer, 2003, Second Edition in preparation). He is now Distinguished Professor Emeritus and has joined his laboratory with the Sampath laboratory in newly renovated space in the Jules Stein Eye Institute.
Office
A-222B, Jules Stein Eye Institute
100 Stein Plaza, UCLA
David Geffen School of Medicine
Los Angeles, CA 90095
Laboratory
Jules Stein Eye Institute
100 Stein Plaza, UCLA
David Geffen School of Medicine
Los Angeles, CA 90095
A vertebrate photoreceptor uses a G-protein receptor (rhodopsin) and a G-protein cascade to produce the electrical response that signals a change in light intensity. Powerful new techniques have made it possible to understand the working of this cascade in extraordinary detail. The reason for this is that practically every protein involved in the cascade in a photoreceptor, from the pigment molecule rhodopsin to the G-protein and channels, but including also a large number of control proteins, are expressed only in the photoreceptors and nowhere else in the body. This makes it possible with genetic techniques to create mice in which these proteins have been knocked out, over or under expressed, or replaced with proteins of modified structure. We use electrical recording to study the effects of such genetic alterations on the light responses of mouse rods and cones, in order to understand the role of these proteins in the visual cascade. We are especially interested in modulatory enzymes and their function in light and dark adaptation. We also have a long-standing interest in mechanisms of photoreceptor degeneration in genetically inherited disease.
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