Charles Zuker

Charles S. Zuker is a Chilean molecular geneticist and neurobiologist. Zuker is a Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Biophysics and a Professor of Neuroscience at Columbia University. He has been an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 1989.

Education and Academic life

Zuker was born in Arica, Chile in 1957. He attended el Colegio San Marcos in Arica, and later el Colegio San Ignacio in Santiago. In 1973, he moved to Viña del Mar to study Biology at the Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso in Chile, where he worked as an undergraduate student in the labs of Roberto Gonzalez and Sergio Marshall. He then went to graduate school at MIT where he obtained his Ph.D. with Harvey Lodish. Zuker did his postdoctoral studies at the University of California, Berkeley with Gerald Rubin. In 1987, he accepted a position as an assistant professor at the University of California, San Diego. In 1989 he was given tenure and appointed an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Prior to moving to Columbia University in 2009, he was the Kevin and Tamara Kinsella Chair of Neurobiology and Distinguished Professor at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine.

In addition to his academic appointments at the University of California and at Columbia University, Zuker was a Senior Fellow at th
Janelia Research Campus
from 2009-2017.

Career

His lab, in collaboration with Nick Ryba at the NIH, have transformed our understanding of mammalian taste. Beginning in the late 1990s Zuker and Ryba, along with other labs, identified and characterized the receptors and the cells mediating each of the five basic taste modalities: sweet, sour, bitter, salty and umami. They then demonstrated that individual taste receptor cells are tuned to encode individual taste qualities, and are hardwired to trigger innate behaviors (like attraction to sweet and aversion to bitters).

In 2003, Zuker and Ryba were the first to use targeted expression of a novel receptor ( RASSL) to activate a neural circuit in a behaving mouse, and profoundly changed its behavior: By expressing RASSL in sweet or bitter taste receptor cells they could drive the animal to be attracted, or averse, to the otherwise tasteless RASSL ligand.

In a set of milestone studies exploring the peripheral and central coding of taste, and combining molecular genetics, physiology, imaging, animal behavior, and optical control of neural circuits, Zuker and collaborators identified the circuits driving responses to the different taste stimuli, and showed that by manipulating the neurons representing sweet and bitter taste in the brain they could directly control an animal’s internal representation, sensory perception, and behavioral actions.

Zuker’s laboratory has also helped uncover the fundamental difference between ''liking'' sweet (i.e. the role of the taste system, activated by both sugars and artificial sweeteners) and ''wanting'' sugar (i.e. the strong desire for sugar). They showed that, in addition to the tongue, sugar acts in the gut to activate a novel neural circuit that communicates to the brain the presence of sugar. This gut-to-brain communication axis (also-known-as the gut-brain axis) is not activated by artificial sweeteners and functions as the principal conduit driving preference for sugar.

More recently, Zuker has been a pioneer in the biology of the body-brain axis. His recent work defined the neural basis for the insatiable appetite for fat, and dissected the brain circuit that detects intestinal fat to promote consummatory responses. In a new study published in 2024, the Zuker lab characterized a brain center modulating body immune responses (the so called Neuroimmune Axis). This new work opened up an entirely new and unexplored window into how th
brain senses and interacts
with the immune system, and demonstrated how the brain exerts exquisite control over the immune state.

Prior to working on mammalian taste, his lab focused on signal transduction pathways in ''Drosophila melanogaster'' (''fruit fly''), including vision, mechanotransduction and thermosensation.

Honors

2001 Elected Member
American Academy of Arts and Sciences

2004 Elected Member
National Academy of Sciences

2006 Elected member
National Academy of Medicine

2014 Elected Fellow
American Association for the Advancement of Science

Further reading

www.zukerlab.com
* https://zuckermaninstitute.columbia.edu/charles-s-zuker-phd
* https://www.hhmi.org/scientists/charles-s-zuker
* Alla Katsnelson
"From The Tongue To The Brain"
Columbia Medicine, Spring/Summer 2015.
* Bijal P. Trivedi

"''Nature''", June 21, 2012.
* Henry Fountain
"How Tongues Taste Carbonation in a Fizzy Beverage"
"The New York Times", October 19, 2009.
* Melinda Wenner
"Magnifying Taste"
"Scientific American", August 2008.
* Burkhard Bilger
"The Search for Sweet"
"The New Yorker", May 22, 2006.
* Kenneth Chang
"Data From Genome Project Transforming Biology Research"
"The New York Times", June 26, 2000

Notable Papers

* Juen, Z., Lu, Z., Yu, R., Chang, A.N., Wang, B., Fitzpatrick, A.W.P., Zuker, C.S. The structure of human sweetness. ''Cell'' 188, 1-13 (2025).
* Jin H, Li M, Jeong E, Castro-Martinez F, Zuker C.S. A body–brain circuit that regulates body inflammatory responses. ''Nature 630'', 695–703 (2024).
* Li M, Tan H-E, Lu Z, Tsang K, Chung A, Zuker C.S. Gut–Brain Circuits for Fat Preference. ''Nature 610'', 722-730 (2022).
* Tan H-E, Sisti A, Jin H, Vignovich M, Villavicencio M, Tsang K, Goffer Y, Zuker C.S. The gut–brain axis mediates sugar preference. ''Nature'' 580, 511-516 (2020).
* Zhang J, Jin H, Zhang W, Ding C, O'Keeffe S, Ye M, Zuker C.S. Sour Sensing from the Tongue to the Brain. ''Cell'' 179, 392-402 (2019).
* Wang L, Gillis-Smith S, Peng Y, Zhang J, Chen X, Salzman CD, Ryba NJ, Zuker C.S. The coding of valence and identity in the mammalian taste system. ''Nature'' 558, 127-131 (2018).
* Lee H, Macpherson LJ, Parada CA, Zuker C.S., Ryba N.J. Rewiring the taste system. ''Nature'' 548, 330-333 (2017).
* Peng, Y., Gillis-Smith, S., Jin, H., Tränkner, D., Ryba, N.J. and Zuker, C.S. Sweet and bitter taste in the brain of awake behaving animals. ''Nature'' 527, 512–515 (2015).
* Barretto, R.P., Gillis-Smith, S., Chandrashekar, J., Yarmolinsky, D.A., Schnitzer, M.J., Ryba, N.J. and Zuker, C.S. The neural representation of taste quality at the periphery. ''Nature'' 517, 373–376 (2015).
* Chen, X., Gabitto, M., Peng, Y., Ryba, N.J. and Zuker, C.S. A gustotopic map of taste qualities in the mammalian brain. ''Science'' 333, 1262–1266 (2011).
* Chandrashekar, J., Kuhn, C., Oka, Y., Yarmolinsky, D.A., Hummler, E., Ryba, N.J. and Zuker, C.S. The cells and peripheral representation of sodium taste in mice. ''Nature'' 464, 297–301 (2010).
* Huang, A.L., Chen, X., Hoon, M.A., Chandrashekar, J., Guo, W., Tränkner, D., Ryba, N.J. and Zuker C.S. The cells and logic for mammalian sour taste detection. ''Nature'' 442, 934–938 (2006).
* Mueller, K.L., Hoon, M.A., Erlenbach, I., Chandrashekar, J., Zuker, C.S. and Ryba, N.J. The receptors and coding logic for bitter taste. ''Nature'' 434, 225–229 (2005).
* Zhao, G.Q., Zhang, Y., Hoon, M.A., Chandrashekar, J., Erlenbach, I., Ryba, NJ. and Zuker, C.S. The receptors for mammalian sweet and umami taste. ''Cell'' 115, 255–266 (2003).
* Nelson, G., Chandrashekar, J., Hoon, M.A., Feng, L., Zhao, G., Ryba, N.J. and Zuker, C.S. An amino-acid taste receptor. ''Nature'' 416, 199–202 (2002).
* Nelson, G., Hoon, M.A., Chandrashekar, J., Zhang, Y., Ryba, N.J. and Zuker, C.S. Mammalian sweet taste receptors. ''Cell'' 106, 381–390 (2001).

External links

Charles Zuker – HHMI bio

Charles Zuker – Zuckerman Institute Faculty

Zuker Lab webpage – Columbia University

Zuker Lab webpage – Janelia Research Campus

{{DEFAULTSORT:Zuker, Charles S.
Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
1957 births
Living people
Columbia University faculty
Columbia Medical School faculty
Howard Hughes Medical Investigators
21st-century American biologists
Members of the National Academy of Medicine