Ricardo Dolmetsch

Title
Assistant Professor

Department
Molecular Pharmacology

Research Interests
Molecular mechanisms of calcium signalling in neurons and myocytes.   Development of new technologies to investigate signaling cascades in neurons and to investigate the functions of neuronal circuits in the brain.

Email
Ricardo.dolmetsch@stanford.edu

Phone
723-9812Fax723-2253

Address
CCSR 3126

http://www.stanford.edu/group/dolmetschlab/

Faculty Research Description
Changes in cytoplasmic calcium play a central role in converting electrical events at the cell membrane into the activation of enzymatic cascades in the cytoplasm of cells.  We are interested in understanding how intracellular calcium activates the signalling pathways that regulate the survival, motility and morphology of neurons and muscle cells.  We are conducting RNA interference and proteomic screens to identify new proteins that regulate neuronal and cardiac function in response to electrical signals.  One project in the lab is to use proteomic approaches to identify the full set of proteins that are associated with voltage gated calcium channels. In parallel we are characterizing the function of specific channel-interacting proteins using a multidisciplinary approach that includes digital calcium imaging, electrophysiology, in vitro cell biological assays and genetically engineered mice.  We are also studying how different temporal and spatial patterns of cytoplasmic calcium regulate the expression of genes in excitable cells.   Finally we are developing new ways of manipulating and visualizing intracellular signalling cascades in neuronal circuits and we are engineering neuronal circuits in vitro to investigate how neuronal networks store and process information.

 R.E. Dolmetsch, U. Pajvani, K. Fife, J.M. Spotts, M.E. Greenberg (2001) Signaling to the nucleus by an L-type calcium channel-calmodulin complex via the MAP kinase pathway.  Science 294:333-339

J.M. Spotts*, R.E. Dolmetsch*, M.E. Greenberg (2002) Time-lapse imaging of a dynamic phosphorylation-dependent protein-protein interaction in mammalian cells. Procedings National Academy of Sciences USA 99:15142-7.

R.E. Dolmetsch, K. Xu, and R.S. Lewis (1998) Calcium oscillations increase the efficiency and specificity of gene expression. Nature 392:933-36

 R.E. Dolmetsch, R.S. Lewis, C.C. Goodnow, and J.I. Healy. (1997) Differential activation of transcription factors by calcium response amplitude and duration. Nature 386:855-58

S. Feske, J. Giltnane, R. E. Dolmetsch, L.M. Staudt and A. Rao. (2001) Gene regulation mediated by calcium signals in T lymphocytes.  Nature Immunology 2:316-24.

J.M. Kornhauser , C.W. Cowan , A.J. Shaywitz , R.E. Dolmetsch , E.C. Griffith , L.S. Hu, C. Haddad , Z. Xia , M.E. Greenberg. (2002)  CREB transcriptional activity in neurons is regulated by multiple, calcium-specific phosphorylation events. Neuron 34:221-33.