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Boris Valery Zemelman (born September 10, 1967) is an American neuroscientist of Russian origin, a founder of a new science branch called Optogenetics.
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Personal life
Boris Zemelman, at the age of ten, immigrated to the United States with his parents Valery and Evelina Zemelman, and lived in Wilton, Connecticut. He graduated from Wilton High School, and for his excellent academic performance was awarded Charles G. Mortimer Scholarships.
He studied Biochemistry at Stanford University, where he received his Doctorate with a dissertation on purification and characterization of a novel mammalian recombinase under professor I. Robert Lehman.
He is now an Assistant Professor of Neuroscience at The Center for Learning and Memory at the University of Texas at Austin. In the past, he was a guest researcher at the Dudman Lab at The Janelia Farm Research Campus Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI).
Research
After completing his dissertation, Zemelman began working in the laboratory of James Rothman on SNARE proteins and their influence on the intracellular membrane fusion.
Subsequently, Zemelman worked jointly with Gero Miesenböck to perform seminal experiments in 2002 and 2003 on selective stimulation of neurons using light. These experiments are now regarded as basic principles of neuroscience research branch of Optogenetics, improved by Karl Deisseroth in 2005. Zemelman and Miesenböck set up first experiments in cultured neurons using Drosophila rhodopsin arrestin and G-protein alpha to control the activity of the neuron. Then they developed heterologous ion channels as switches for controlling neurons with optical and pharmacological stimuli. These studies has led to these scientists being regarded as candidates for the Nobel Prize in 2013.
Currently, Zemelman conducts research on the role of the hippocampus in the formation of memory, including diseases such as Alzheimer's. In 2015, Boris Zemelman and his colleagues received three grants totaling $4 million, to develop unique techniques for imaging and manipulating the activity of neurons in the brain. The research is funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), president Barack Obama's Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) initiative launched in 2014.