2025 Issam M. Fares Family Lecture Featuring Dr. Charles Zuker

About Charles Zuker

Dr. Charles Zuker is a Chilean molecular geneticist and neurobiologist renowned for his groundbreaking work in sensory biology. Dr. Zuker’s lab, in collaboration with Dr. Nick Ryba at the NIH, identified the receptors and cells responsible for the five basic taste modalities — sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and umami. Their work revealed that individual taste receptor cells are tuned to encode specific taste qualities and are hardwired to dedicated brain circuits to trigger innate behaviors, such as attraction to sweet and aversion to bitter. More recently, his lab has been studying the biology of the body-brain axis. Their research has defined the neural basis for the insatiable appetite for sugar and fat (the gut-brain axis), brain-body responses to macro- and micro-nutrient internal states, and brain control over the immune system (the neuro-immune axis). Prior to his work on mammalian taste and the body-brain axis, Dr. Zuker’s lab identified the receptors and transduction pathways involved in Drosophila phototransduction and mechanotransduction. Dr. Zuker has been elected to several prestigious scientific communities, including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the National Academy of Medicine. Outside of academia, Dr. Zuker is a co-founder of Kallyope, Cajal Neuroscience, and Nilo Therapeutics.