Berryman will receive a two-year $221,250 NIH award in June for his grant proposal, “Role of CLIC in epithelial morphogenesis. “He is the principal investigator, along with co-principal investigator Soichi Tanda, Ph.D., associate professor of biological sciences.

CLIC proteins are traditionally thought to transport chloride ions across cell membranes—hence the term CLIC, an acronym for “chloride intracellular channels.”

But according to Berryman, CLIC proteins may do a lot more than that. Recent studies indicate that they help regulate development and maintenance of tissues—and may be involved in the development of cancer cells.

In 2000, Berryman discovered one type of CLIC protein, CLIC 5, while conducting research on the human placenta. More recently, researchers in Maine and Oregon discovered that mice without CLIC 5 lost their hearing during early development. “It turns out that sensory epithelial (surface) cells in the mouse ear degenerate without CLIC 5,” Berryman says. “We wanted to find similar patterns, to broaden our perspective on what CLICs do.”

To better understand the link between CLIC proteins and cell development, Berryman is studying how CLIC proteins interact with other proteins in fruit flies. Fruit flies make good research subjects, he said, because their protein structure and their genetic coding sequence are similar to those of humans.

More importantly, fruit flies only exhibit one type of CLIC gene, whereas many organisms—like mice or humans—have several different CLIC genes. That’s important because, to test the functions of CLIC, Berryman must inhibit the CLIC gene in the fruit fly, and if more than one CLIC gene exists, the others take over, thus complicating the research.

Berryman and Tanda will be working with a team of undergraduate, graduate and medical students to expand understanding of CLIC function and basic biology.