Jana Drummond

Graduate Student. Department of Psychiatry, University of Alabama at Birmingham

I am a first year Neuroscience graduate student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.  I received a BA in Psychology from Hollins University in 2002, and have worked as a Research Assistant for the past seven years at UAB in the Departments of Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry and Behaviorial Neurobiology.  I joined the laboratory of Dr. James Meador-Woodruff in 2006 and assisted Dr. Robert McCullumsmith in his efforts to understand the roles of vesicular glutamate transporters (VGLUTs) and excitatory amino acid transporters (EAATs) in abnormal glutamate trafficking. I am currently completing a rotation in the laboratory under the mentorship of Dr. Meador-Woodruff and Dr. Janusz Tucholski. Cornichons and transmembrane AMPA-receptor regulatory proteins (TARPs) are two multigene families that have recently been shown to interact with AMPA receptors, and may play a role in abnormal glutamatergic neurotransmission.  I am using quantitative real-time PCR analysis to investigate the expression of cornichons and TARPs in schizophrenia.

E-Mail: jdrummond@uab.edu