Gail Robertson, Ph.D.

Back to last page

Gail Robertson is Associate Professor in the Department of Physiology, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Together with Dr. Richard Moss, Professor and Chair of the Dept. of Physiology, she is co-founder of the M.S. in Biotechnology Program. Dr. Robertson has been responsible for the development and oversight of the M.S. in Biotechnology curriculum, which was created de novo to fulfill the educational needs of our students and respond to the need for a growing biotechnology workforce in Wisconsin.

In addition to her commitments with the M.S. in Biotechnology Program, Dr. Robertson teaches Human Physiology to first-year medical students. She also supervises a research laboratory of some ten scientists and students investigating the molecular mechanisms underlying the rhythmic activity of the heart.  Work in her laboratory uncovered the cause of type 2 Long QT Syndrome (LQTS), a potentially fatal cardiac arrhythmia disease, as a loss of the repolarizing current cardiac I_Kr. The ion channels underlying I_Kr, called hERG channels, are also the targets for acquired LQTS, a much more clinically prevalent condition affecting 1-4% of the general population.  Acquired LQTS is caused when drugs with other therapeutic targets inappropriately block the hERG or I_Kr channels, thus mimicking inherited LQTS.

Dr. Robertson is actively engaged in the transfer of hERG-related technologies, which are used by drug discovery companies to screen out those drugs that block hERG channels and may therefore trigger acquired LQTS. In addition, she consults for biotechnology and pharmaceutics companies engaged in research on hERG and other ion channel targets.

Dr. Robertson serves on a panel for the National Institutes of Health responsible for the evaluation of federally-funded Ph.D. graduate programs in the biological sciences across the country. She is a member of the Editorial Board for The Journal of Biological Chemistry. Her honors include a National Science Foundation CAREER Award and the Established Investigator Award of the American Heart Association.