John J. Ngai, Ph.D.

Research

How does the olfactory apparatus of vertebrates detect and discriminate thousands of odors? Our approach to elucidating the mechanisms of olfactory discrimination involves the characterization of odorant receptors and the neural pathways that they activate. We are also interested in the developmental mechanisms responsible for specifying odorant receptor expression in olfactory neurons and the pathfinding of these cells’ axons to their appropriate targets. Finally, our lab is developing DNA microarray technologies to elucidate genome-wide patterns of gene expression in the nervous system.