Meet: Kenneth M. Baldwin, Ph.D.

Professor of Physiology & Biophysics
Univerity of California, Irvine

Dr. Baldwin's laboratory research focuses on the impact of activity patterns or exercise regimens on the biochemical and physiologic properties of cardiac and skeletal muscle in mammals. His research has demonstrated that muscle systems are in a dynamic state of biological adaptation, referred to as plasticity. Various subcellular components and proteins can be changed both qualitatively and quantitatively in accordance with how the muscle system is continually stressed (or unstressed) by activities such as chronic locomotion, muscle loading and unloading. Of primary interest is how the effects of these various activities are translated into biochemical events that lead to alterations in protein expression in muscle. Because the role of myosin is both a structural and regulatory protein involved in muscle contraction, work in Dr. Baldwin's laboratory focuses on factors that influence the expression of different isoforms of myosin in both cardiac and skeletal muscle. As a corollary to these experiments, Dr. Baldwin's group, in conjunction with NASA, recently sent rats on a Space Shuttle mission to study the effects of weightlessness on skeletal muscle.

Students performing research in Dr. Baldwin's laboratory receive training in muscle physiology, biochemistry, and exercise physiology. Additional training in the supplementary techniques of protein chemistry, cell biology, and molecular biology is readily available and encouraged.