Rate My Professor Shane Ohline

Dr. Shane Ohline serves as a Research Fellow in the Department of Physiology within the School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. He earned his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California, Los Angeles, between 1989 and 1994. Ohline's academic career began in physical chemistry, with contributions such as the spectrophotometric determination of pH in seawater (Ohline et al., Marine Chemistry, 2007) and a differential scanning calorimetric study of bilayer membrane phase transitions published in the Journal of Chemical Education (2001). From 2018 to 2023, he held a Postdoctoral Fellowship position spanning the Departments of Psychology and Physiology at the University of Otago. His research trajectory shifted toward neuroscience, focusing initially on cardiac ryanodine receptors before pivoting to their roles in the brain.

Currently, Ohline investigates the dysfunction of ryanodine receptors in Alzheimer's disease using mouse models. His work examines receptor organization and trafficking in neurons, alongside the impacts of approved heart medications on brain function via patch clamp electrophysiology, with the goal of restoring normal receptor activity. This research is supported by funding from the Health Research Council and the Neurological Foundation, involving collaborations with Professors Wickliffe Abraham, Ruth Empson, Pete Jones, and others. Key publications include 'Egr1 expression is correlated with synaptic activity but not intrinsic membrane properties in mouse adult-born dentate granule cells' (Ohline et al., Hippocampus, 2024), 'Altered membrane properties but unchanged intrinsic excitability and spontaneous postsynaptic currents in CA1 pyramidal neurons of the APPswe/PS1ΔE9 mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease' (Ohline et al., Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience, 2022), and 'Effect of soluble amyloid precursor protein-alpha on adult hippocampal neurogenesis in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease' (Ohline et al., 2022). Ohline has presented at conferences including the New Zealand Medical Sciences Congress and Australasian Winter Conference on Brain Research. His scholarship garners over 1,500 citations, influencing studies on adult neurogenesis, synaptic plasticity, memory, and Alzheimer's pathology.