Maurice Kernan
Associate Professor
PhD, University of Wisconsin
Centers for Molecular Medicine (CMM)
Room 447
Office Phone: (631) 632-9964
Lab Phone: (631) 632-9182
Fax: (631) 632-6661
Training
Maurice Kernan attended the University of Dublin and received a B.A. in Genetics in 1984. He went on to obtain a Ph.D. in Genetics from the University of Wisconsin in 1990. He then spent three years as a Research Associate at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California, San Diego. He came to Stony Brook University in 1995 where he is currently Associate Professor of Neurobiology & Behavior. He has served as the Director of the HHMI summer undergraduate research program since 2007.
Research Interests/Expertise
Our research combines Drosophila genetics, molecular biology and electrophysiology to investigate the cellular and molecular basis for the mechanical senses: touch, hearing and proprioception. We focus on mechanosensory signaling in ciliated sensory neurons and in sperm flagella, using genetics to discover their molecular working parts, in particular the mechanically-activated ion channels that convert touch and sound into electrical receptor potentials. Flies are ideal for getting to grips with mechanosensation: in addition to their powerful genetics, they bear thousands of mechanosensory bristles, each innervated by a single neuron, with striking physiological similarities to the sensory cells in the human ear. We begin with behavioral mutants that are touch-insensitive, uncoordinated and/or deaf. Signal-transducing proteins that we have discovered include an extracellular protein that links neuronal sensory endings to bristles, and the first sound-transducing channels to be identified in any organism.
The neuronal sensory ending is a modified cilium, a cell-surface compartment with
its own signaling and transport systems. The cilium/basal body/centriole complex is
found throughout the eukaryotes; primary cilia on human cells, long seen as vestigial, have now been implicated in developmental
signaling and in diseases such as polycystic kidney disease.