Staff profile

I completed my PhD at La Trobe University in 1996 studying aspects of skeletal muscle physiology covering basic physiological mechanisms and processes involved in muscle fatigue. In 1997 I commenced my first postdoctoral position at UNSW in Sydney. In 1999 I returned to La Trobe to continue postdoctoral work with the Muscle Cell Research Group and in 2003 was appointed lecture in Physiology at the University of Adelaide. At the end of 2007 I took up an appointment as senior lecturer in the Department of Zoology at La Trobe University. My research career has been principally focused on the physiology of skeletal muscle in vertebrates and examining metabolic factors that contribute to skeletal muscle fatigue. My research interests also extend to work on cardiac muscle examining developmental changes in contractile behavior of the heart under normal and diseased conditions. I have been awarded a number of research grants from national competitive funding sources such as the NH&MRC and Ramacciotti foundation. I have been actively in the scientific community as both a subscribing member and member of council of the Australian Physiological Society, organized a public forum on the neuroscience featuring the guest speaker Baroness Professor Susan Greenfield and contribute to a number of international journals and both the NH&MRC and ARC as a peer reviewer.

Qualifications

• BSc, PhD, La Trobe

Teaching areas

• Coordinator and lecturer of 2nd year Vertebrate Physiology and Morphology (ZOO2VMP)
• Coordinator and Lecturer - Heron Island Field Course

Supervision

• I have supervised 6 honours students -  5 recieving 1st class honours

• I currently have 2 PhD students (Adelaide/La Trobe), and 1 honours student

Professional involvement

Peer Review

International Scientific Journals
• Journal of Physiology
• Journal of Applied Physiology
• Pflügers Archiv
• Cellular Physiology and Biochemistry
• Clinical and Experimental Pharmacology and Physiology
• American Journal of Physiology


National Granting Bodies
• ARC
• NH &MRC

Professional membership

• 2004-2007 - Member of the South Australian Association for Research between Italy and Australia (ARIA)
• 2004-2007 Member of the South Australia Neuroscience Institute (SANI)
• 1996-2006 Full Member - Australian Physiology Society (AuPs)
• 2006-2009 Member of the AuPs council

Research interests

• Basic skeletal muscle cell physiology.
• Excitation-contraction coupling in skeletal and cardiac muscle.
• Developmental changes in excitation contraction coupling in fetal cardiomyocytes.
• Consequences of hypoxia and growth restriction on fetal heart development.

Recent publications and presentations

• Posterino GS & Dunn SL (2008).  Comparison of the effects of inorganic phosphate on caffeine-induced Ca2+ release in fast- and slow-twitch mammalian skeletal muscle.  Am J Physiol Cell Physiol. 294(1):C97-105.
  
• Spencer TN, Botting KJ, Morrison JL, Posterino GS (2006). Contractile and Ca2+-handling properties of the right ventricular papillary muscle in the late-gestation sheep fetus. J Appl Physiol. 101(3):728-33.

• Posterino GS, Cellini MA & Lamb GD (2003). Effects of oxidation and cytosolic redox conditions on excitation-contraction coupling in rat skeletal muscle.  J Physiol. 15;547 (Pt 3):807-23.