Education
- Doctor of Philosophy, Genetics, Rockefeller University
- Master of Science, Molecular Biology, Universität Basel
Biography
The Rothenfluh Lab is in the Department of Psychiatry and in the U of U Molecular Medicine Program housed in the Eccles Institute of Human Genetics (building). Fittingly, the lab's interest revolves around genes, molecular mechanisms, and neural circuits involved in behavior. The Rothenfluh lab uses Drosophila as a model organism, and it turns out that these flies are more like us than one would have anticipated.
In the area of the lab's main focus, addiction, for example, flies react like mammals: they dislike alcohol initially, but with experience, they acquire the taste for it. The lab aims to understand the mechanisms mediating these behavioral responses and changes. In addition, the lab continues to investigate whether (and to show that) homologous genes are involved in human and Drosophila responses to this drug of abuse.
Dr. Rothenfluh got his M.Sc. from the University of Basel, Switzerland. He worked in the lab of Walter Gehring, investigating the specificity of homeodomain-DNA interaction. For his Ph.D. he joined the lab of Michael Young, at Rockefeller Univ. There, he studied the molecular mechanisms of Drosophila circadian rhythms. For his postdoctoral training, he joined the lab of Ulrike Heberlein at UCSF, where he started investigating the genes and molecular mechanisms involved in Drosophila alcohol responses. He was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas for nine years, before joining the U of U in the fall of 2016.