Dr. King's academic interests are in the areas of  biochemistry, physiology, and pharmacology. His research has been focused on elucidating details of the biochemistry and genetics of membrane transport proteins, generally, and particularly on determining how the structure of a GABA transport protein determines its function. GABA transport inhibitors facilitate GABAergic transmission and exhibit clinically useful anticonvulsant activity. Novel GABA transport inhibitors may be anticipated to complement the sedative and anxiolytic properties of barbiturates and benzodiazepines, which facilitate GABAergic transmission by a different mechanism. Dr. King pioneered the use of bacterial transport systems to model analogous neurotransmitter transport systems from the mammalian nervous system.