Biography
Pierre Charnet got his PhD in 1988 on animal physiology at Tours University (France) on the regulation of cardiac Ca channels. After a Postdoc at Caltech (lab Henry Lester, Pasadena, Ca, 1988-19990) on the structure-function relationships of mammalian nicotinic acetylcholine receptors, analyzed by expression in Xenopus oocytes, he got a permanent position at the “Centre de Recherche de Biochimie Macromoléculaire”, CNRS in Montpellier, FR), where he started to work on the biophysics (activation, inactivation, permeation, regulation by auxiliary subunits) of mammalian ions channels using the Xenopus oocytes as expression system. He then moved to the “Institute des Biomolecules Max Mousseron” (CNRS, Montpellier) where he is now studying the biophysical and pharmacological properties of the insects channelome (mostly from honey bees), with a particular interest on the physiological roles of these ion channels and how they are affected by neurotoxic insecticides.