A postdoctoral fellow is invited to join in a research lab. The applicant will study the roles of gap junctions (and mutants) in cardiac arrhythmias in rodent models. She/he will use isolated and cultured rodent heart cells, papillary/trabeculae muscles and Langendorff preparation to study gap junction properties.

 

Gap junctions are critical channels responsible for action potential propagation in the heart. Altered gap junction function due to mutations and heart disease-linked remodeling are thought to play an important role in reducing the speed of the action potential propagation and predisposing the heart to arrhythmias. Many important questions are not resolved as how gap junction mutants and heart disease-linked gap junction remodeling may lead to a change in heart function. We used dual patch clamp technique to characterize several connexin43 and connexin40 mutants, two of the major heart gap junction subunits (Manias JL et al. 2008 Cardiovasc. Res.; Gong X et al., 2007 J. Biol. Chem.; Gollob MH et al. 2006 New Eng. J. Med.). Some of these mutants appear to be linked to arrhythmias. We plan to further characterize and to develop novel techniques/preparations to study the role of gap junction in cardiac arrhythmias. Follows the URL link for more info about the laboratory and local gap junction research group: http://publish.uwo.ca/~bdonglin/

 

The applicant should have a recent PhD in a relevant field, ideally with some experience in electrophysiological recordings, heart preparations or optical imaging. Informal enquiries, application, CV and 3 letters of reference should be sent to Dr. Donglin Bai, Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada N6A 5C1 or email: donglin.bai@schulich.uwo.ca