FBLD 2008 Speakers

Palmer Taylor, Ph.D.

Dr. Palmer Taylor is the Sandra and Monroe Trout Professor of Pharmacology at the University of California, San Diego. He also serves as Dean of the Skaggs School of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences and as Associate Vice Chancellor for Health Sciences at UCSD. His long term research activities have centered around the structure and function of acetylcholinesterase and nicotinic acetylcholine receptor with particular interests in the molecular determinants of inhibition and reactivation of cholinesterase and agonism and antagonism of the receptor. More recently with Barry Sharpless' group, Dr. Taylor's group have employed structural and dynamic properties of these two proteins in developing freeze-frame, click chemistry in the design of selective ligands for these two molecules. Because of its structural simularity with acetylcholinesterase, Dr. Taylor's group has also studied by various physical techniques the synaptic protein, neuroligin, and its interaction with its partnering protein, neurexin.