Lawrence B. Salkoff (born March 3, 1944) is an American neuroscientist and currently a professor of neuroscience and genetics at Washington University School of Medicine
Early life and education
Salkoff received his Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree in economics in 1967 from University of California-Los Angeles. After graduation he volunteered in the United States Peace Corps working in Colombia, South America, from 1967 to 1970. Upon Salkoff's return to the United States he studied at the University of California, Berkeley, where he received his PhD in neurogenetics in 1979. Subsequently, Salkoff trained as a postdoctoral associate in neurogenetics at Yale University, in the laboratory of Professor Robert Wyman with consultation and aid from Professor Charles F. Stevens.
Career
Salkoff's career began in 1978 before much detail was known about ion channel structure using Drosophila as a model system. As a graduate student he worked on the shibire mutant and characterized its defects in synaptic transmission.
Cloning of the extended family of potassium channel genes. The structure of potassium channels which shape the electrical activity in the nervous system was unknown when Salkoff was a graduate student. It was believed that one way to obtain the protein structure of a potassium channel was to identify a gene encoding the channel protein in a genetically tractable organism, and then combine newly developed tools in biophysics, molecular genetics, DNA sequencing in eukaryotes, and molecular cloning, to clone and sequence the gene and functionally express the encoded channel in a heterologous expression system. To this end, as a postdoctoral researcher, Salkoff adapted the voltage clamp technique to the fruit fly Drosophila which had been used by Alan Lloyd Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley to reveal the ionic basis of the nerve action potential. This enabled the direct observation of ion currents in a genetically tractable organism.
This technique was then used to show that the Drosophila Shaker gene was the structural gene for a potassium channel, a claim which was based on several genetic criteria and confirmed by biophysical analysis of the expected ion channel current phenotype. Thus, mutations of a structural gene should produce loss of function mutations where the gene product is absent or non-functional, gain of function mutations where the functional properties of the gene product is changed, and position effect mutations where a breakpoint near the gene reduces expression of a normal gene product. All three classes of mutations were characterized by Salkoff, e.g. 1. Loss-of-function mutant ( ShrKO120) which removed the Shaker K+ current. 2. Gain-of-function mutant (Sh5) (which changed the inactivation kinetics of the current, 3. Position effect conferred by the W32 X-chromosome breakpoint.
Salkoff also combined voltage-clamp technique with genetic analysis to reveal the location of the Shaker gene on the Drosophila polytene chromosome map. These studies validated the Shaker gene as the structural locus of a potassium channel and guided a chromosomal “walking” strategy to the physical location of the Shaker locus. It also had the effect of directing great attention to Drosophila as a model system combining molecular genetics with biophysical tools and enabled the study of ion channel biology using a comprehensive approach not possible in other systems.
Salkoff found that the W32 chromosomal broke within or close to the Shaker gene. This study showing the location of the Shaker gene on the physical chromosome map facilitated the cloning of the Shaker potassium channel. Based on these findings Salkoff began a genomic DNA "walk" along the chromosome to clone the Shaker gene in conjunction with Patrick H. O'Farrell and Lily Jan but moved to Washington University before the project was finished. The project was completed by several laboratories. The cloning and functional expression of a family of voltage-gated K+ channels conserved in all animals brought order to the field of electrophysiology, and validated the use of simple animal models in the field of membrane excitability.