Lan Zhu studied Medicine in Wuhan, China and went on to teach Physiology for a couple of years in the same Medical School. To further develop her interest in neuroscience she went to study for her PhD in Neuroscience in Turin, Italy upon receiving an international PhD studentship. After her PhD, she has been working at University of Turin, Italy, University of Leicester, and King’s College London as a postdoctoral researcher.
She joined DMU in February 2015 as a Lecturer in Biomedical and Medical Science. Her main research interests are the neuronal mechanisms in physiological and pathological processes. She has been studying the brain cellular and molecular mechanisms for the learning and memory, e.g. neuronal/synaptic plasticity, for many years and then ion channel mechanisms particularly potassium channel mechanisms in peripheral neuropathic pain in the recent years.
She also has a passion in the translational research which led her to lead and complete a project with a group of neuroscientists, engineers and urologists.
She is currently interested in combining neurophysiology with neuropsychiatry and trying to understand the neurobiology of psychiatric disorders. Her current research is looking at the regulation of some neuronal functional key players such as potassium channels and glutamate receptors and the underlying mechanisms in the brain of a pharmacological animal model of schizophrenia. She is collaborating with neuroscientists from DMU and University of Leicester.
The research techniques employed in her research include whole cell patch clamp recording, in vivo extracellular recording, ex vivo intracellular recording, cell/tissue culture, confocal imaging, immunohistochemistry, Western blotting, behaviour analysis, surgery, tissue preparation.