Professor Christopher Ashley FMedSci

Chris Ashley is Professor of Physiology at the University of Oxford. He has made pioneering contributions to the study of intracellular signalling. In particular, he was the first to demonstrate unequivocally, that calcium acts as a vital second messenger, linking events at the surface membrane to the cell’s physiological activities. He showed that a minute and rapid change in free calcium is the prime linking event in striate muscle. His recent work has used photolabile caged calcium to illuminate the workings of cardiac muscle in health and disease.