ISSN: 2689-8993
Associate Professor
Department of Neurology
Mayo Clinic College of Medicine
Rochester, Minnesota
United States of America
Dr. Xin-Ming Shen is an Associate Professor in Neurology department from Mayo Clinic College of Medicine at Rochester. Dr. Shen is also working as a Research Scientist and Supervisor in Department of Neurology from Mayo Clinic at Rochester. After he earned his Ph.D. degree, He became interested in neurobiology of neuromuscular junction. Later he investigated the disease mechanisms in the Congenital Myasthenic Syndromes (CMS) for 19 years with multiple techniques such as intracellular recordings of single muscle fiber from patient in vitro, single-channel patch-clamp recordings of acetylcholine receptors at the end plates of patient in vitro, and expression studies of functional consequences of mutant endplate proteins, which includes cloning interested genes into mammal cells to test ability of expression or into bacteria for protein purifications, kinetic analysis of the activation of acetylcholine receptors (AChR) by cluster analysis of the opening and closing dwell times at single channel level, amperometric measurement with carbon fiber electrodes to analyze the effect of SNARE proteins on exocytosis, and biochemistry analysis for enzymatic kinetics of choline acetyltransferase. To further understand the mechanistic consequences of mutations in acetylcholine receptor, He also conducted mutant cycle analyses to explore the energetic interactions between mutant residues and other key residues essential for activation of the receptor. To investigate the energetic couplings of inter-residues of AChR can prove the pathogenicity of the mutation at atomic level but also provide insights into mechanism of receptor activation. He is expert in electrophysiology, molecular biology, and computer sciences enabled me to contribute to unraveling the varied disease mechanism in the CMS.
