Thomas Sudkhov

Thomas Christian Sudkhov was born on December 22, 1955 in Gottingen, Germany. In 1982, he obtained his MD degree in medicine from the University of Gottingen. He completed his doctoral thesis with Professor Victor P Whittaker at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry MPIB in G \u00f6 ttingen, focusing on the biophysical structure of secretory particles. From 1983 to 1986, Dr. Sudkhov, along with Mike Brown and Joe Goldstein, received training as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Texas, Dallas, in the southwestern Texas area, to elucidate the structure, expression, and cholesterol dependent regulation of LDL receptor genes. Dr. Sudkhov began his independent career as an assistant professor at UT Southwestern at the University of Texas Southwest in 1986. At the beginning of establishing the laboratory, he decided to shift from the field of cholesterol metabolism to the field of neuroscience, mainly studying the molecular characteristics of synaptic transmission. His work initially revolved around the mechanism of neurotransmitter release, which was the first step in synaptic transmission. Its molecular basis was still completely unknown in 1986. Later, Sudkhov's work gradually focused on analyzing and studying the formation of synapses in the following aspects; The process of regulating the initial aggregation state of synapses, as well as maintaining, disappearing, and determining their characteristics. Sudkhov taught at UT Southwestern at Dallas Southwest University until 2008 and was one of the founders of the department of neuroscience at the university. In 2008, Sudkhov came to Stanford University and served as a professor at Stanford University School of Medicine. In addition, Sudkhov has been serving as a researcher at the Howard Hughes Medical Research Institute since 1986.