Ongoing projects include studies of oncogene expression and cytokines, modulation of neuronal signaling, growth control in skeletal muscle, signal transduction in a variety of tissues including platelets, muscle cells, and the nervous system, intracellular protein degradation, cytoskeletal and receptor function, the development and regeneration of the visual system, extracellular matrices and limb development, spinal cord injury, neural stem cells and brain development, mechanisms of neural plasticity in memory and learning, mechanisms involved in epilepsy using both human tissues and animal models, and molecular mechanisms of Alzheimer?s disease. The department has state-of-the-art facilities for the techniques used in these studies, which include tissue culture, subcellular fractionation, fluorescent digital image analysis, electrophysiological recording, and confocal and 2-photon microscopy.