Sathyanaryanan Puthanveettil, an assistant professor on the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute, has been awarded a pair of notable grants to study a critical component of long-term memory formation.
Puthanveettil will receive $225,000 over three years from the prestigious Whitehall Foundation to study the role in long-term memory of a motor protein called kinesin. In this study, he will use the marine snail, Aplysia, a favorite of memory researchers because of its exceptionally large neurons and simple nervous system.
In addition to the Whitehall award, Puthanveettil has received a one-year, $100,000 grant from the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation. Puthanveettil also plans to use the award to study kinesin, in this case to develop molecular screens to identify small molecules that can modulate kinesin function in the mammalian brain. This work will be conducted in collaboration with Scripps Research colleagues Peter Hodder, senior scientific director of lead identification, and William Roush, chemistry professor, executive director of Medicinal Chemistry, and associate dean of graduate studies at Scripps Florida.