He came to the Vollum Institute in 1990 and was promoted to scientist in 1994. He holds appointments in the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology and the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in the School of Medicine. POMC is expressed in the brain and pituitary and is enzymatically processed into several neuropeptides involved in the stress response. Somatostatin modulates pituitary function and is highly expressed in brain areas that are important for learning and memory. Another major research area of the lab is the brain's dopamine system.
Dopamine is involved in locomotor function, motivation, and reward-oriented behavior.
This neurotransmitter is also a modulator of pituitary function. Many of the studies use transgenic mice produced by microinjection of cloned genes into mouse eggs. This approach allows study of the molecular events involved in gene regulation under normal physiological conditions. Low and his associates identify specific gene regulatory elements, produce novel pituitary cell lines from pituitary tumors induced in transgenic mice, and study the physiological function of neuroendocrine cells by a cell ablation technique. A second type of mutation involves homologous recombination in mouse embryonic stem cells.