Marie E. Burns, Ph.D.

Clinical/Research Interests

Trained as a biochemist and electrophysiologist, Marie E. Burns studies the temporal regulation of signal transduction mechanisms in neurons. Much of her work has investigated the deactivation of the G protein cascade in photoreceptor cells of the retina. Her future studies will seek to understand the mechanisms by which different G protein cascades yield signals of varying amplitude and durations, such as in the rod and cone photoreceptors in the retina.

Title:

Professor

Specialty:

Ophthalmology

Center/Program Affiliation:

Center for Neuroscience, Eye Center

Education:

Duke University
Durham, North Carolina
Ph.D. 1996

Duke University
Durham, North Carolina
M.S. 1994

Fellowships:

Stanford University
Palo Alto, California
1996-00

Professional Memberships:

Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology
Biophysical Society
Society for Neuroscience

Select Recent Publications:

Song, X., Vishnivetskiy, S.A, Gross, O.P., Emelianoff, K., Mendez, A, Chen, J., Gurevich, EV., Burns, M.E., and Gurevich, VV. (2009). Enhanced arrestin mutant facilitates photoresponse recovery and protects rod photoreceptors in the absence of rhodopsin phosphorylation. Curr. Biol. 19,700-5.

Burns, M.E. and Pugh, Jr. E.N. (2009). RGS9 concentration matters in rod phototransduction. Biophysical J. 97, 1538-1547.

Lobanova, E.S., Finkelstein, S., Herrmann, R, Chen, Y.-M., Kessler, C., Michaud, N.A, Trieu, L.H., Strissel, K.J., Burns, M.E. and Arshavsky, V.Y. (2008). Transducin gamma-subunit set expression levels of alpha- and beta-subunits and is crucial for rod viability. J. Neurosci. 28, 3510-20.

Martemyanov, K.A, Krispel, C.M., Lishko, PV., Burns, M.E., and Arshavsky, V.Y. (2008). Functional comparison of RGS9 splice isoforms in a living cell. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 105,20988-20993.

Chan, S., Rubin, W.W., Mendez, A, Liu, X., Song, X., Hanson, S.M., Craft, C.M., Gurevich, V.V., Burns, M.E., and Chen, J. (2007). Functional comparisons of visual arrestins in rod photoreceptors of transgenic mice. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci. 48,1968-75.

Krispel, C.M., Sokolov, M., Chen, Y.-M., Song, H., Herrmann, R, Arshavsky, V.Y. and Burns, M.E. (2007). Phosducin regulates the expression of transducin l3y subunits in rod photoreceptors and does not contribute to phototransduction adaptation. J. Gen. Physiol. 130, 303-312.

Kerov, V., Rubin, W.W., Natochin, M., Melling, N.A, Burns, M.E. and Artemyev, N.O. (2007). N-terminal fatty acylation of transducin profoundly influences its localization and the kinetics of photoresponse in rods. J. Neurosci. 27,10270-10277.

Burns, M.E., Mendez, A, Chen, C.-K., Almuete, A, Quillinan, N., Simon, M.I., Baylor, D.A, and Chen, J. (2006). Deactivation of phosphorylated and nonphosphorylated rhodopsin by arrestin splice variants. J. Neurosci., 26, 1036-1044.

Moussaif, M., Rubin, W.W., Kerov, V., Reh, R, Chen, D., Chen, C.-K., Hurley, J.B., Burns, M.E. and Artemyev, N.O. (2006). Phototransduction in a transgenic mouse model of Nougaret night blindness. J. Neurosci. 26, 6863-6872.

Krispel, C.M., Chen, D., Chen, Y.-J., Melling, N., Martemyanov, K.A, Quillinan, N., Arshavsky, V.Y., Wensel, T.G., Chen, C.K., and Burns, M.E. (2006). RGS expression rate-limits recovery of rod photoresponses. Neuron 51, 409-416.