Reporter Volume 26, No.9 November 3, 1994

By ELLEN GOLDBAUM
News Bureau Staff
Linda M. Hall, professor of biochemical pharmacology in the UB School
of Pharmacy, has received a prestigious Method to Extend Research in
Time (MERIT) Award from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute
of the National Institutes of Health. The award provides Hall with a
total of $893,000 in research funding over five years, with the
possibility of funding for an additional five years.
	The MERIT Award provides long-term support for principal
investigators who have consistently demonstrated an outstanding record
of scientific achievements through their NIH grants, allowing them to
work for up to 10 years without having to submit a new grant
application. The grant supports Hall's work on calcium channels in the
model system Drosophila melanogaster, the common fruit fly.
Calcium channels are of interest in part because they play a key role
in muscular and heart function and are targets for numerous
cardiovascular drugs. In addition, neuronal calcium channels are
potential targets for neuroprotective agents for use in treating
stroke, ischemia, head injury and other brain trauma. 
	Hall's research has applications in a variety of potential
products, including production of novel biotechnology-based
insecticides and cardiovascular drugs.
	By analyzing at a molecular level the genes that code for
specific parts or subunits of calcium channels, Hall is able to use
single gene mutations as precise "surgical tools" to functionally
inactivate one calcium channel subtype at a time to define its
specific role in a particular organism. Hall has discovered evidence
that one of these calcium channel subunits is critical to the fruit
fly's survival during embryonic development. Her research on other
subunits in the fruit fly has demonstrated they are similar to those
in mammals' brains.
	A UB faculty member since 1989 and former chair of the
Department of Biochemical Pharmacology, Hall is the director of the
Oligonucleotide Synthesis and DNA Sequencing Facility run by UB's
Center for Advanced Molecular Biology and Immunology.
	Hall earned her doctorate at the University of Wisconsin at
Madison. A McKnight Scholar in Neuroscience, she was also the
recipient of the Jacob Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award and the
Monique Weill-Caulier Career Scientist Award. In addition to serving
on the editorial board of the Journal of Neurogenetics and as
executive editor of Invertebrate Neurobiology, she has authored
numerous scientific papers and has presented many invited symposia.