2003 ASBMB Fellowship: Richard Allen

Allen Richard Allen completed medicine at the University of Sydney in 1988, spending the next two years in general residency jobs, followed by one year as a surgical resident.

With an interest in biophysics and the application of technology and engineering to biological systems, he left full-time clinical work to pursue a Masters of Biomedical Engineering at the University of New South Wales. This entailed coursework on mathematical modelling, electronics, biological signal processing, and biophysics, and a project for which he constructed an eye-operated keyboard as an interface for the hands-free operation of a computer.

After working for a period in Emergency medicine, he began a PhD in 1998 with Professor Kiaran Kirk in the School of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Australian National University. Professor Kirk's research interests include the physiology and biochemistry of the intra-erythrocytic stages of the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum, with an emphasis on membrane transport. Richard's work on this important human pathogen includes investigations into the source of the parasite's membrane potential, and its mechanisms for the homeostasis of K⁺. He has demonstrated that the parasite accumulates K⁺ (required to enable its rapid growth) against a concentration gradient using a mechanism common to many plants: a large negative membrane potential generated by a proton pump drives electrophoretic uptake via a K⁺ selective channel.

Another major research interest in the Kirk Lab is the raft of new permeabilities that the malaria parasite induces in the membrane of its host erythrocyte, and which allow the passage of a diverse range of solutes. These New Permeation Pathways (NPP), which exhibit some channel-like features, are crucial to the parasite's survival, and are therefore of great interest as targets for new drugs to treat malaria. K⁺ is one solute whose flux is increased across the host cell membrane, and keeping with the theme of K⁺ homeostasis, Richard is keen to investigate how this altered K⁺ permeability benefits the parasite.

Richard plans to use the ASBMB fellowship to visit the laboratory of Professor Florian Lang in Tübingen, Germany, one of very few experienced in patch-clamping the weakened membrane of the mature malaria infected erythrocyte. By gaining experience with this technique he hopes to understand better the nature of the new permeabilities induced in the host erythrocyte membrane, with particular regard to K⁺ , and the role they play in parasite physiology.

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This page last modified: October 10, 2008.