Ian Mellor

Contact

• workRoom A70 Life Sciences Building
  University Park
  Nottingham
  NG7 2RD
  UK
• work0115 9513257
• ian.mellor@nottingham.ac.uk

Biography

Current Position

• Assistant Professor/Lecturer in Molecular Neuroscience, School of Life Sciences, University of Nottingham, since 2012.

Previous Positions

• Research Lecturer, Division of Molecular Cell Biology and Biophysics, School of Biology, University of Nottingham, 2007-2012.
• Senior Research Fellow, Division of Molecular Toxicology, School of Biology, University of Nottingham, 2003 to 2007.
• Chief Experimental Officer, Division of Molecular Toxicology, School of Biology, University of Nottingham, 2002 to 2003.
• Senior Experimental Officer, Division of Molecular Toxicology, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Nottingham, 1994 to 2002.
• Research Assistant, Department of Life Science, University of Nottingham, 1988 to 1994.
• Research Technician, Department of Zoology, University of Nottingham, 1986 to 1988.

Teaching Summary

Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience (convenor)

Fundamentals of Neuroscience

Animal Behaviour and Physiology

Higher Skills in the Biological Sciences

Research Projects (BSc and MSci)

Research Summary

My research is focused on several important ion channels of the nervous system including nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChR), ionotropic glutamate receptors (IGR) and voltage-gated sodium… read more

Current Research

My research is focused on several important ion channels of the nervous system including nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChR), ionotropic glutamate receptors (IGR) and voltage-gated sodium channels and how their functioning is modulated by a variety of naturally occurring animal and plant toxins, drugs and pesticides. These compounds are excellent tools to study the structure and function of ion channels but also represent leads for the development of new drugs and pesticides and help us to understand problems such as pesticide resistance. Specific current interests are polyamine-containing toxins from solitary wasps, alkaloids from ladybirds, toxins from centipedes and pyrethroid insecticides. I am also interested in the development of multi-target directed ligands for Alzheimer's disease, in my case assessing their ability to inhibit NMDA receptor mediated calcium current.

The research is carried out using electrophysiological techniques including patch-clamp of neuronal cultures and cell lines, and voltage-clamp of Xenopus oocytes expressing the channels. Toxin structure-activity and ion channel protein mutation studies have enabled the identification of potent and selective antagonists and potentiators of these ion channels and their mechanisms and sites of action to be determined.