Professor Paul Taylor
- Position: Professor of Chemical Education
- Areas of expertise: molecular evolution; eukaryogenesis; calcium signalling; chemical education.
- Email: P.C.Taylor@leeds.ac.uk
- Phone: +44(0)113 343 6529
- Location: G52e Chemistry
Responsibilities
- Dean: Student Education (Experience)
Research interests
The Evolutionary Origins of Neurotransmission: Eukaryogenesis is one of the great mysteries of modern science. Whereas most recent papers on the topic concern the prokaryotic origins of all eukaryotes, we are focusing instead on the ancestry of a single kingdom, the animals. Neurotransmission is in many ways the defining characteristic of animals, which are multicellular organisms that can sense changes in their environment and react quickly. While sponges and placozoa do not have nervous systems, all other animals do. Distinctive though neurotransmission is, it is not realistic to assume that all its components emerged suddenly in a particular ancestral animal. Indeed, homologs of many proteins involved in neurotransmission are found in plants and other eukaryotes as well as in many phyla of bacteria. Our current work concerns phylogenetic analysis of the archetypal machinery of neurotransmission, ionic glutamate receptors, calmodulin, and calmodulin dependent kinases.
Chemical Education: research on topics in research-based learning, including the impact of undergraduate research initiatives. Leadership in Higher Education.
<h4>Research projects</h4> <p>Any research projects I'm currently working on will be listed below. Our list of all <a href="https://eps.leeds.ac.uk/dir/research-projects">research projects</a> allows you to view and search the full list of projects in the faculty.</p>Research groups and institutes
- Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry