space
 

Laboratory of  

   Professor John G. Forte

Department of Molecular & Cell Biology,  Division of Cell & Developmental Biology
space

 
  P.I. — John Forte
    (phone: 510-642-1544)
    faculty web page

  Lab Manager:
    James Crothers, PhD
  Post-doc:
    Lixin Zhu, PhD
  Graduate Student:
    Elsa Lee

 Undergraduate students:
    Cheng  Chen
    Cody  Ender
    Jason  Hatakeyama
    Joy  Makdisi
    Michael  Starr
    Vikram Venkatesh 
    Bing  Zhang
Address:
    Forte Lab
    Molecular & Cell Biology
    245 Life Sciences Addition, #3200
    University of California
    Berkeley, CA  94720-3200

Lab phone:
    510-642-4360

Fax:
    510-643-6791
(Number is for entire building,
so identify addressee on Fax.)
 

 


 
Much of the Forte lab in early 2007: (L-R) Cheng Chen, Dr. Lixin Zhu, Kevin Poon (alum.), Joseph Delaney (alum.), Aennes Abbas (visiting scholar, now back in Germany), Sara Ghayouri (alum.), Prof. John Forte, Dr. Rihong Zhou (now a pharmacist with Kaiser Permanente), Dr. Shelley Mettler (PhD May, 2007; now working at Trellis Bioscience), Dr. Jim Crothers, Tim Wu (alum.)
 
 
 


  Research interests:

Gastric acid is secreted by parietal cells (also called oxyntic cells) in glands of the stomach lining.  This lab has been studying various aspects of parietal cell structure and function for four decades, making the initial discovery {1967} of a K+-stimulated, ouabain-insensitive ATPase activity associated with gastric acid secretion — H,K-ATPase, the molecular "proton pump" — and proposing that a membrane recycling process moves these pumps between active and inactive membrane domains {1977, 1981}.  In addition, the lab has been studying details of the H,K-ATPase enzymatic cycle, structure and function of the highly glycosylated β-subunit of the H,K-ATPase, synthesis and processing of H,K-ATPase, intracellular signal transduction, ion transport pathways, mechanisms of vesicular fusion and endocytosis, and involvement of the cytoskeleton and cytoskeletal linking proteins in the dynamic morphological changes in the parietal cell with stimulation.




Model of the morphological and functional rearrangement of the parietal cell between inactive and secreting states.


Selected publications.