Rate My Professor Adriano Senatore

Adriano Senatore is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Toronto Mississauga, where he joined as Assistant Professor in 2015. He holds a graduate faculty appointment in the Department of Cell & Systems Biology and participates in the Collaborative Program in Neuroscience. Senatore completed his BSc in 2004 and MSc in 2006 at the University of Guelph, earned his PhD from the University of Waterloo in 2012, conducted postdoctoral research at Georgia State University from 2013 to 2015, and served as a Grass Fellow at the Marine Biological Laboratory in 2015.

Senatore's research explores the functional, physiological, and evolutionary properties of ion channels and neurotransmitter receptors crucial for neural and synaptic signaling. Focusing on early-diverging animals like the placozoan Trichoplax adhaerens—which lacks neurons, synapses, and muscles but coordinates behaviors such as social feeding, chemotaxis, and phototaxis—his lab studies voltage-gated Ca2+ channels for neurotransmitter release and muscle contraction; neuropeptide- and proton-gated Na+ channels (DEG/ENaC) involved in pain, learning, memory, and transmission; ionotropic glutamate receptor homologues of NMDA, AMPA, and kainate receptors driving excitatory transmission; and the sodium leak channel NALCN linked to circadian rhythm, excitability, and anesthetic sensitivity. The lab integrates molecular biology, patch-clamp electrophysiology, biochemistry, cell culture, behavioral analysis, microscopy, genomics, transcriptomics, and bioinformatics.

Senatore has published extensively in high-impact journals. Key works include "NALCN/Cch1 channelosome subunits originated in early eukaryotes" (The Journal of General Physiology, 2025), "Evolution of iGluR ligand specificity, polyamine regulation, and ion selectivity inferred from a placozoan epsilon receptor" (Communications Biology, 2025), "Divergent Ca2+/calmodulin feedback regulation of CaV1 and CaV2 voltage-gated calcium channels evolved in the common ancestor of Placozoa and Bilateria" (Journal of Biological Chemistry, 2022), "Function and phylogeny support the independent evolution of an ASIC-like Deg/ENaC channel in the Placozoa" (Communications Biology, 2023), "Physiology and Evolution of Voltage-Gated Calcium Channels in Early Diverging Animal Phyla: Cnidaria, Placozoa, Porifera and Ctenophora" (Frontiers in Physiology, 2016), and "Neuropeptidergic integration of behavior in Trichoplax adhaerens, an animal without synapses" (Journal of Experimental Biology, 2017). His scholarship has garnered over 1,500 citations. Funding includes $80,000 from the Canada Foundation for Innovation in 2016 and Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council Discovery Grants.