Dr Orlandi lab’s research is focused on investigating the biology of a group of understudied GPCRs in brain and visual systems. GPCRs are involved in every aspect of human physiology and are ideal targets for drug development. The endogenous ligands for a group of ~100 understudied GPCRs are still obscure, thus they are known as “orphan GPCRs”. Nonetheless, the identification of disease-causing mutations in patients and studies on transgenic animals have established that orphan GPCRs are also involved in essential physiological processes. . The Orlandi lab uses a multidisciplinary approach that involves proteomics, biochemistry, molecular cloning, and pharmacology to functionally characterize macromolecular complexes of orphan GPCRs.