Andy Hudmon, PhD

Bio

I hold a BS degree in Marine Biology and an MS degree in Interdepartmental Physiology, both conferred by Auburn University. My PhD training occurred under the mentorship of Dr. Neal Waxham at The University of Texas Health Sciences Center in Houston, where I studied CaMKII structure-function. Subsequent to this training, I was a post-doctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Howard Schulman in the Department of Neurobiology at Stanford University, where I studied L-type voltage gated channel regulation by calcium signaling as well as CaMKII autoregulation during normal and aberrant calcium signaling. My first appointment was at Yale University in the Department of Neurology as a Research Associate with Dr. Stephen Waxman, and in 2006, I accepted a tenure-track position as an Assistant Professor at the Indiana University School of Medicine. I was granted tenure and advanced to Associate Professor in 2012.

My laboratory studies normal and aberrant calcium (Ca2+) signaling; as this second messenger regulates diverse functions ranging from fertilization and cell death to contraction and secretion. In the nervous system, neuronal communication requires Ca2+ signaling, as does the regulation of the strength and specificity of neuronal connections. Ca2+ alters cell function by altering the biological activity of proteins. This process may involve a direct affect through Ca2+ altering a protein's conformation as well indirect affects through the activation of enzymes. Primarily we study how multifunctional protein kinases, kinases that phosphorylate numerous substrates throughout the cell, modulate excitable cell activity like neurons and myocytes. Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII) is a critical mediator of synaptic plasticity and best known as a "cognitive kinase" due to its role in learning and memory and "machine-like" behavior in decoding Ca2+ signals. My current research interests are in the fields of molecular and cellular neuroscience, with a strong focus on Ca2+ signaling transducers and effectors within the nervous system. Specifically, my studies focus on protein kinases and their downstream targets, including ion channels and other proteins implicated in synaptic plasticity, excitotoxic neurodegeneration, and neuropathic pain

The secondary goal of my laboratory is to elucidate how protein kinases function as specialized molecular machines and assemble with their substrates and regulators to form signaling modules. In doing so, we combine traditional biochemical and biophysical techniques in conjunction with fluorescent imaging approaches to understand how kinases and their substrates contribute to regulating neuronal and myocyte excitability.