Mitochondrial Function

Anne N. Murphy, Ph.D. is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmacology within the medical school at the University of California, San Diego. She obtained her PhD from The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Her post-doctoral studies were conducted at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and at The National Cancer Institute. Her career in both academic and biotechnology settings has focussed on mitochondrial bioenergetic function and the discovery of mitochondrial-targeted therapeutic strategies. She has particular interest in how mitochondrial metabolite and ion transport controls cell metabolism.
David Chan is currently Professor of Biology at the California Institute of Technology. He graduated from Harvard College with a degree in Biochemical Sciences. He then joined the MD-PhD program at Harvard Medical School, completing his graduate studies with Philip Leder. His postdoctoral training was with Peter Kim at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at MIT.

His lab's main interest is to understand the role of mitochondrial dynamics in cellular function and human physiology. Mitochondria are dynamic organelles that have many important functions in cells, including energy generation, metabolism, and regulation of cell death. A key feature of mitochondria is that they undergo cycles of fusion and fission, and his lab is trying to understand the role of these processes in controlling their function. In addition, several human diseases arise from a perturbation of these processes, and he hopes to understand the cellular mechanisms involved in disease pathogenesis.