Cheng Huang, PhD, has won a Whitehall Foundation grant to study the neural mechanisms of prediction using Drosophila (fruit flies) as a powerful model to understand analogous processes in the human brain.
Tom Franken, MD, PhD, has received a Young Investigator Grant from the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation (BBRF) to fund a new direction in his research on the neural mechanisms of perception.
![Figure 2. Diagram of a Kv3 potassium channel subunit and the location of the V473A variant. (A) Kv3 subunit with 6 transmembrane domains. P indicates the pore domain governing the ion selectivity of the channel. The colored filled circles in S6 represent selected dominant gain-of-function variants in Kv3.1 and Kv3.2. The KV3.2 V473A variant is located near the cytoplasmic opening of the channel pore (red). Kv3.1 variants: 1) V425M, 3) M430I, 4) V432M, 5) V434L (Ambrosino et al., 2023); KV3.2 variants: 2) I465V, 6) V471L (Li et al., 2022; Schwarz et al., 2022), 7) V473A (Schwarz et al., 2022) (which is the topic of this study). (B) Position of WT V473 and V473A variant on S6 in the Kv3.2 channel structure. The WT V473 (red) is located near the cytoplasmic mouth of the channel and may be important in stabilizing the closed structure (left image). The variant V473A is shown in the right image (red). Structures of human Kv3.2 were based on the cryo-EM structure of the highly similar paralog, Kv3.1, where the S6 amino acid sequence is identical for Kv3.1 and Kv3.2. The residue position V436 in the Kv3.1 sequence is equivalent to residue V473 in Kv3.2 [P48547 KCNC1 compared to Q96PR1 KCNC2 - UniProt]. The images of human Kv3.1 structure were prepared in UCSF Chimera (Pettersen et al., 2004). The V436A (V473A) variation in the Kv3.1 (Kv3.2) structure was generated from the WT Kv3.1 cryo-EM structure (PDB: 7PHH) by replacing V436 with Alanine using the Swapaa function in UCSF Chimera (right image).](https://neuroscience.wustl.edu/app/uploads/2025/02/fphar-15-1528541-g002-286x300.jpg)
In Frontiers in Pharmacology, Lawrence Salkoff, PhD, and colleagues report how norfluoxetine, a long-lasting metabolite of fluoxetine that may accumulate in the brain at greater concentrations than fluoxetine itself in patients treated with fluoxetine, is most likely the agent bringing relief to the patients.
Zahra Dhanerawala, an MD/PhD student in the lab of Edward Han, PhD, was awarded an American Heart Association (AHA) Predoctoral Fellowship to further her research into the connection between the hippocampus and memory.
Martha Bagnall, PhD, is the principal investigator on a $5.2 million NIH grant involving collaborators at four universities.
Kristen Prufrock, PhD, was inducted Oct. 15 into the Academy of Educators at Washington University School of Medicine.
In Nature, Cheng Huang, PhD, and colleagues show that in the Drosophila brain, interconnected short- and long-term memory units of the mushroom body jointly regulate memory through dopamine signals that encode innate and learnt sensory valences.
Leandro Fosque, a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Theoretical & Computational Neuroscience (CTCN) at Washington University, has been awarded an F32 Ruth L. Kirschstein Postdoctoral Individual National Research Service Award.
Dennis D.M. O’Leary, who earned his PhD in neural sciences in 1983 at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, recently passed away.
Adam Kepecs, PhD, the Robert J. Terry Professor of Neuroscience and a professor of psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has been selected for a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director’s Pioneer Award, to study how the brain’s neural circuits decode signals from the immune system and orchestrate adjustments in behavior and motivation.