Annette Gilchrist, PhD

I am an Assistant Research Professor at Northwestern University, working in the lab of Dr. Heidi Hamm. Our laboratory works on G Proteins, their receptors, and effectors. For general information on current work in this area, see our review in Curr. Opin. Cell Bio. "Heterotrimeric G proteins".

The focus of my work is the interface between the receptor and the alpha subunit of the heterotrimeric G protein. I use a combinatorial peptide-on-plasmids approach to identify high affinity peptides that either serve as competitve inhibitors. For further information read JBC 273 14912-14919 "Antagonists of the Receptor-G protein Interface Block Gi-coupled Signal Transduction".

Most recently I have constructed minigenes that express the carboxyl terminus of the Galpha. When transfected into mammalian cells, the short peptide sequences serve as negative inhibitors of G proteins. This manuscript "A Dominant-Negative Strategy for Studying Roles of G Protein in Vivo" is currently in press from JBC.

I am part of the Northwestern University Institute for Neuroscience Postdoc Organization. Initiated in the fall of 1997, I organize monthly meetings, with presentations by postdocs or invited speakers. Our organization was recently covered in the Northwestern University Institute for Neuroscience Bulletin . We have welcomed speakers from Neurogin, and Abbott Laboratories, Searle, and Merck.

I am involved in the "Wild About Science" Program, sponsored by the American Heart Association. In this program scientists go and teach 4th - 8th graders about what life in the lab is like. As one of the model systems that we use is rhodopsin-transducin, I often go to the schools with an ice chest of bovine eyes. During a visit to career day at a nearby elemenatary school I was written up by the Daily Herald. (part 1), (part 2)

I am originally from Oklahoma City, OK. I have a BS in Biology from the University of Central Oklahoma, a MS in Biochemistry from the University of Connecticut, and a PhD in Immunology from the University of Connecticut-Health Center. For more details, please see my CV. (page1) (page 2) (page 3)

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