Work
Dr. Chagas Filho's main scientific contribution was centered on the study of the eletroplaques of the "poraquê" or electric eel (Electrophorus electricus), actually a fresh water electric fish native to the Amazon. With his group, he made important and original advances in the elucidation of its anatomy and electrophysiology, cytochemistry, as well as its nervous control. He discovered the brain command structures which control electrical discharges. He discovered also that the electroplaques has two kinds of excitability, one which is direct, and another which is reflex via the nervous pathways. He studied also the effects of curare on the electroplaques, which are modified striated muscles and thus have synaptic transmission based on acetylcholine (curare is an antagonist of this neurotransmitter). Dr. Chagas Filho also isolated the ACh membrane receptor.
As an educator, Dr. Chagas Filho left a very important influence on biomedical research in Brazil, through his many scientific disciples and colleagues at the Biophysics Institute, many of whom went to became leaders themselves in neurophysiology, such as Hertha Meyer, Hiss Martins Ferreira, Eduardo Oswaldo Cruz Filho, Ricardo Gattass, Aristides Azevedo Pacheco Leão, Eduardo Penna Franca, Gustavo de Oliveira Castro, Darcy Fontoura de Almeida, Antonio Paes de Carvalho, Carlos Guinle da Rocha Miranda, Romualdo José do Carmo and several others. It was during the initial years of the Institute, also, that Rita Levi-Montalcini (1909-), then a young researcher of Jewish descent who had to escape fascism, worked towards her important discoveries on neurotrophic factors, supported by Carlos Chagas Filho. She later went to receive the Nobel Prize of Physiology and Medicine.
He published several books, including an autobiography, a biographical memoir about his father and more than 100 scientific papers.
Read more about this topic: Carlos Chagas Filho
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