Well-known membrane protein scientists, Dr. JIANG Youxing (UTSW, HHMI), Dr. Mark Mayer (NIH), and Dr. Stephen White (UCI), visited Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica (SIMM) on May 13th and 14th and presented lectures about the cutting-edge researches of the ion channels and receptors.

Dr. JIANG Youxing, from The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and Howard Hughes Institute, introduced the structural studies of potassium channels and non-selective cation channels. As tenured committees of NICHD and NINDS, National Institute of Health (US), Dr. Mark Mayer exhibited his 30 years’ pioneering works on gating mechanism and structural researches of Glutamate receptor. Dr. Stephen White’s lecture focused on the movement of membrane embodied proteins by approaches of experimental method and computer simulations, which were part of his 40 years’ contributions in the field of membrane protein.

These lectures provided a good chance for all attendances, especially for the graduate students, to communicate with frontier scientists who still keep on their bench work. The visitors were very impressed by the achievements of SIMM and certainly believe that China has a very promising future.