Christopher S. Colwell - Deputy Editor-in-Chief

Professor Colwell is in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA. He is an internationally known expert in the field of circadian rhythms. The goal of his laboratory is to understand the neural mechanisms that underlie the generation and regulation of circadian rhythms in mammals. His group is approaching this problem by integrating several levels of analysis: at a systems level, determining the consequences of pharmacological and genetic manipulations of the behavioural output of the circadian system; at a cellular level, studying cell-to-cell communication and the control of excitability using whole-cell patch clamp recording and calcium imaging in a brain slice preparation; at a molecular level, examining rhythmic changes in gene expression in SCN neurons and determining how they are regulated by cellular events. All of these approaches utilize genetic mouse models in conjunction with behavioural, imaging, physiological and molecular methods.