Dr Samantha J. Pitt

Dr Samantha J. Pitt

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Researcher profile

Phone
+44 (0)1334 46 3516
Email
sjp24@st-andrews.ac.uk

 

Research areas

In healthy individuals, the controlled release of calcium causes the heart to beat strongly.  Calcium is released through specialised gates called ryanodine receptors (RyR2). In patients with heart failure and fatal arrhythmias the release of calcium becomes erratic leading to weakened contraction of heart muscle and cell death. Using a combination of low noise electrophysiological recordings in combination with molecular and biochemical methods my group investigates intracellular calcium dynamics and the molecular function of RyR2 and other ion channels that are present on intracellular organelles. The aim of our research is to try to understand what happens to channel function under pathophysiological conditions.

PhD supervision

  • Struan Loughlin
  • Richard Edel
  • Xueyu Guo
  • Jothi Letchumy Mahendra Kumar
  • Quenton Hurst
  • Claudia Harper
  • Jordan Marsh

Selected publications

 

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