Professor

E-Mail: geni@wsu.edu

Phone: (509) 335-7517

The work in our laboratory focuses on the development of micro electro-analytical techniques for application to problems in neurobiology, neuropharmacology, and biological psychiatry. The work involves the construction and characterization of chemical micro-sensors for use in monitoring the biogenic amine neurotransmitters, as well as neurobiologically important inorganic ions. Our work is rather diverse in that we conduct basic electrochemical studies with these small sensors, as well as explore their usefulness for neuro-pharmacological and neurophysiological studies in vivo.

Problems of current interest include miniaturization of chemical sensors to dimensions of less than one micrometer, the development of electrochemical/neurobiological metabolic models for interpreting chemical measurements in vivo, the correlation of in vivo chemical signals with measures of brain cell electrical activity, chemical measurements of subsecond components of neurotransmitter release, the determination of the spatial and temporal constraints of extracellular neurotransmitter influences at the level of the nerve cell, and the chemistry and mechanism of action of antipsychotic drugs.

Biographical Information

James O. Schenk, Professor of Chemistry, Pharmacy, Biochemistry and Biophysics, completed his undergraduate work at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina, studied clinical chemistry at Georgia State University, and received his Ph.D. in analytical chemistry and neuroscience at the University of Kansas. He subsequently spent one year as a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral research training fellow and two years as a National Institute of Mental Health postdoctoral research fellow in the Neuropsychopharmacology Research Unit at Yale University School of Medicine. He remained at Yale for an additional year as a postdoctoral associate before joining the Washington State University faculty in the summer of 1986.

Selected Publications

Batchelor M. and Schenk J. O. (1998) Protein kinase A may kinetically upregulate the striatal transporter for dopamine. J. Neuroscience 18, 10304-10309.

Wayment H. K., Deutsch, H., Schweri M. M., and Schenk J. O. (1999) Effects of methylphenidate analogs on phenethylamine substrates for the striatal dopamine transporter: potential as amphetamine antagonists? J. Neurochemistry 72, 1266-1274.

Earles C. and Schenk J. O. (1999) Multisubstrate mechanism for the inward transport of dopamine by the human dopamine transporter expressed in HEK cells and its inhibition by cocaine. Synapse 33, 230-238. 

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