Charles Zuker

Charles S. Zuker is an American molecular geneticist and neurobiologist of Chilean descent. His lab has contributed to our understanding of mammalian taste, in collaboration with Nicholas Ryba's laboratory at the NIH beginning in the 1990s. Prior to working on mammalian taste, his lab focused on visual signal transduction pathways in Drosophila melanogaster (fruit fly). He is an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a senior fellow at the Janelia Farm Research Campus. Zuker is a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. After more than 20 years at the University of California, San Diego, he began his appointment at Columbia University in 2009.

Education and training

Zuker attended the Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso in Chile, and obtained his Ph.D. from MIT with Harvey Lodish. He did his postdoctoral studies at the University of California, Berkeley with Gerald Rubin.

Further reading

• Bijal P. Trivedi, "The Finer Points of Taste", "Nature", June 21, 2012.
• Henry Fountain, "How Tongues Taste Carbonation in a Fizzy Beverage", "New York Times", October 19, 2009.
• Melinda Wenner, "Magnifying Taste", "Scientific American", August 2008.
• Burkhard Bilger, "The Search for Sweet", "The New Yorker", May 22, 2006.
• Kenneth Chang, "Data From Genome Project Transforming Biology Research", "New York Times", June 26, 2000.

External links

• Charles Zuker - HHMI bio
• Charles Zuker - Columbia Neuroscience Faculty
• Columbia Biochemistry & Molecular Biophysics Faculty
• Zuker Lab webpage - Columbia University
• Zuker Lab webpage - Janelia Farm Research Campus