Mark W. Hankins BSc ARCS PhD DIC
Research Themes
Divisional Themes
- Ion Channels and Transporters
- Genetics and Genomics
- Imaging
- Neuroscience
- Cell and Molecular Biology
- Protein Science and Structural Biology
- Integrative Physiology
NLO Themes
Group Members
- Laurence Brown
- Wayne Davies
- Lei Zheng
- Josephine Fu
Collaborators
- Russell Foster
- Robert MacLaren
- Matthew Wood
- Stuart Peirson
- Sumathi Sekaran
- Stephanie Halford
- Rob Lucas, Manchester
- David Whitmore, UCL
- Patrick Degenaar, Imperial
- Gebhard Schertler, LMB, Cambridge
- Samer Hattar, Johns Hopkins
- Karl Deisseroth, Stanford
Publications from M.Hankins
- Cameron Morven A, Barnard Alun R, Hut Roelof A, Bonnefont Xavier, van der Horst Gijsbertus TJ, Hankins Mark W, and Lucas Robert J (2008) Electroretinography of wild-type and Cry mutant mice reveals circadian tuning of photopic and mesopic retinal responses. J Biol Rhythms, 23(6):489-501.
- Guler Ali D, Ecker Jennifer L, Lall Gurprit S, Haq Shafiqul, Altimus Cara M, Liao Hsi-Wen, Barnard Alun R, Cahill Hugh, Badea Tudor C, Zhao Haiqing, Hankins Mark W, Berson David M, Lucas Robert J, Yau King-Wai, and Hattar Samer (2008) Melanopsin cells are the principal conduits for rod-cone input to non-image-forming vision. Nature, 453(7191):102-5.
- Hankins Mark W, Peirson Stuart N, and Foster Russell G (2008) Melanopsin: an exciting photopigment. Trends Neurosci, 31(1):27-36.
- Foster Russell G and Hankins Mark W (2007) Circadian vision. Curr Biol, 17(17):R746-51.
- Foster Russell G, Hankins Mark W, and Peirson Stuart N (2007) Light, photoreceptors, and circadian clocks. Methods Mol Biol, 362:3-28.
| Contact address | Levels 5 & 6 West Wing, The John Radcliffe Hospital, Headley Way, Oxford, Oxfordshire, OX3 9DU, United Kingdom |
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Sources of Funding
Biography
Professor of Visual Neuroscience at Imperial College, Mark Hankins moved to Oxford in 2006. His laboratory in the NLO explores the neurobiology of the vertebrate retina at the cellular level. He showed that for the first time that the human primary visual cone pathway is regulated by the activities of an irradiance detector that utilizes a novel photopigment (Hankins and Lucas, 2002). His work has shown that in addition to providing an independent light input to the circadian system and other recipient brain areas, novel photopigments play a critical role in the regulation of local retinal physiology. Developing state of the art calcium imaging, his lab provided the first global view of inner retinal photoreception in mammals, through an examination of the rodless/coneless retina (Sekaran et al, 2003,2005). Examining retinal circuitry, he recently explored the targeted ablation of the melanopsin expressing cells, which resulted in the blockade of all non-image forming light responses, showing that the melanopsin ganglion cells are also the exclusive conduits of rod and cone inputs to these retinorecipient areas in the brain (Güler et al, 2008). His laboratory originally pioneered heterologous expression for human-melanopsin and this work provided the vital definitive evidence that melanopsin is indeed a sensory photopigment with an additional photoisomerase function more typical of invertebrate pigments (Melyan et al., 2005). Since then he has developed a collaborative structure/function and mutagenesis study (Cambridge and Manchester) of melanopsin that promises to extend our fundamental knowledge of this novel photopigment. The finding that expression of the melanopsin alone was sufficient to render neurones light responsive, has significant bio-technological implications. Hankins now leads a project developing a novel retinal optical prosthetic, which is a translational development of this basic science. The device is being developed as a generic platform for restoring vision to those blind through retinal degeneration. Professor Hankins is a visiting Professor of Bioengineering at Imperial College London.
