grosman@life.uiuc.edu
452 Burrill Hall
Office: (217) 244-1736
Lab: (217) 333-1405
Fax: (217) 333-1133
Mail to:
Department of Molecular and Integrative Physiology
524 Burrill Hall
407 S. Goodwin Ave
Urbana, IL 61801
Claudio Grosman
Assistant Professor of Molecular and Integrative Physiology, Biophysics, and Neuroscience
Education
B.S./M.Sc. 1991 University of Buenos Aires (Argentina)
Ph.D. 1996 University of Buenos Aires (Argentina)
Postdoc. 1997-2002 State University of New York at Buffalo
Teaching Interests
Molecular Mechanisms of Neurotransmitter-gated Ion Channels
My laboratory is broadly interested in the relationship between structure and function in neurotransmitter-gated ion channels, with special emphasis on the Cys-loop superfamily of synaptic receptor-channels. Our main tools are single-channel recording and analysis, and protein-engineering techniques. Some of the particular issues we have been working on lately are:
- Quantitative characterization of fundamental properties of neurotransmitter-gated ion channels such as rate and equilibrium constants of ligand binding in the closed and open states.
- Quantitative understanding of the different phenomena that contribute to the kinetics of the postsynaptic-current decay under physiological and pathological conditions.
- Linear free-energy relationships and the chemical dynamics of the closed to open conformational change.
- Relationship between structure and electrostatics of the pore domain.
Representative Publications
Cymes, G. D. and Grosman, C. 2008. Pore-opening mechanism of the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor evinced by proton transfer. Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, 15(4):389–96. [Abstract]
Elenes, S., Ni, Y., Cymes, G.D. and Grosman, C. 2006. Desensitization contributes to the synaptic response of gain-of-function mutants of the muscle nicotinic receptor. Journal of General Physiology, 128:615–27. [Abstract]
Purohit, Y., and Grosman, C. 2006. Block of muscle nicotinic receptors by choline suggests that the activation and desensitization gates act as distinct molecular entities. Journal of General Physiology 127:703–17. [Abstract]
Purohit, Y., and Grosman, C. 2006. Estimating binding affinities of the nicotinic receptor for low-efficacy ligands using mixtures of agonists and two-dimensional concentration-response relationships. Journal of General Physiology, 127:719–35. [Abstract]
Cymes, G.D., Ni, Y. and Grosman, C. 2005. Probing ion-channel pores one proton at a time. Nature, 438:975–80. [Abstract] [News and Views]
Grosman, C. 2003. Free-energy landscapes of ion-channel gating are malleable: changes in the number of bound ligands are accompanied by changes in the location of the transition state in acetylcholine receptor channels. Biochemistry, 42:14977–87. [Abstract]
Grosman, C. 2002. Linear Free-Energy Relationships and the Dynamics of Gating in the Acetylcholine Receptor Channel. A phi-value analysis of an allosteric transition at the single-molecule level. Journal of Biological Physics, 28:267–77. [Article]
Grosman, C. and Auerbach, A. 2001. The dissociation of acetylcholine from open nicotinic receptor channels. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 98:14102-7 [Abstract]
Grosman, C., Zhou, M., and Auerbach, A. 2000. Mapping the conformational wave of acetylcholine receptor channel gating. Nature, 403:773–6.
[Abstract]