[7] Obukhov's research later evolved to feature multiple fields including neurophysiology, traumatic brain injury, pain, and atherosclerosis.
[8] Obukhov started his research career in 1983 in the laboratory of Dr. Alexander A. Krayevsky at the Institute of Molecular Biology of Academy of Sciences of Soviet Union (Moscow, USSR) where he was involved in the chemical synthesis of unnatural nucleoside triphosphates.
[9] In 1985, he joined the laboratory of Dr. Oleg A. Krishtal at Bogomoletz Institute of Physiology where he learned the advanced electrophysiological patch clamp technique and started investigating the physiological effects of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) analogs synthesized by him on the activity of sensory nodose ganglion (a vagus nerve ganglion) neurons, which express P2X receptor-channels activated by ATP.
In 1992, he was awarded the Humboldt Research Fellowship[12] from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Bonn, Germany) to conduct research at a German University, and this allowed him to join the laboratory of Dr. Günter Schultz at the Institut für Pharmakologie of Freien Universität Berlin (Berlin, Germany) where he studied the biophysical properties of just cloned Transient Receptor Potential (TRP) Channels.
While working in the Schultz laboratory, Obukhov with his colleagues provided first evidence that TRP proteins are ion channels by recording their single-channels activity.