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RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS:
Finding the Best Fit Immune Response
Self-Correcting Cowlicks?
Making Sense of Proteomics
Renegade RNA
Keeping the Immune System in Check
Treating Muscles with Blood Pressure Drug
NEWS BRIEFS:
Peter Espenshade, Ph.D., Wins Burroughs Wellcome Award
Betty Doan Awarded Cancer Prevention Research Grant
Andy P. Feinberg, M.D., Now Also a Ph.D.
RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS:
12/3/06 Finding the Best Fit Immune Response
Optimal antigen selection is critical for effective immune responses. While the molecular players involved have been known for some time, the mystery remained over how selection happens. Scheherazade Sadegh-Nasseri and colleagues in pathology, biophysics and biophysical chemistry now have discovered that the “helper” protein DM kicks out ill-fitting candidate antigens by disrupting a chemical bond. The empty receptor then tries on another candidate antigen for size. Better fitting antigens, apparently resistant to DM’s quality control monitoring, stay stuck to the receptor long enough for presentation to and activation of the immune response.
Read the paper here.
Read the news release here.
12/15/06 Self-Correcting Cowlicks?
That tuft that won’t lie flat with the rest of your hair may have genetic roots. Growing a smooth coat—for mice and probably other furry creatures—requires each hair to sprout from under the skin’s surface at similar angles and pointing in the same direction. The gene responsible for saving on styling products is Frizzled-6; mice engineered to lack this gene are covered in cowlicks and whorls. Jeremy Nathans and colleagues in molecular biology and genetics, neuroscience, and ophthalmology have shown that Frizzled-6 enables each growing hair to make slight adjustments in its orientation with respect to its neighbors to prevent messy hair. If only that could be bottled.
Read the paper here.
12/18/06 Making Sense of Proteomics
First came the high-throughput experiments that generated unmanageable amounts of protein-protein interaction data; next came the multitude of publicly available Web-based protein data repositories. How is a bench scientist to know which database to check for information that might help his own research? Akhilesh Pandey and colleagues at the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine and the Institute of Bioinformatics in Bangalore, India, now have published a detailed, systematic analysis of these databases and cataloged their salient features.
Read the paper here.
1/5/07 Renegade RNA
MicroRNAs, implicated in cancer and normal development, gum up larger strands of RNA that carry instructions for making proteins. Their role in fine-tuning how much protein is made from each gene physically places them near the cell’s protein-making machinery. However, surveying about half of the 500 known human microRNAs, Joshua Mendell and colleagues at the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine now have identified a lone microRNA in the nucleus—miles away in cellular terms from its counterparts. The renegade microRNA contains in its sequence a built-in “zip code” that, when attached to other small RNAs, forces them into the nucleus as well.
Read the paper here.
Read the news release here.
1/17/07 Keeping the Immune System in Check
Transplant rejection and chronic inflammation both can be life-threatening situations resulting from the human immune system’s spiraling out of control. Identifying a natural inhibitor of immune responses may prove useful in stopping such unwanted immune reactions. Jun Liu and colleagues in pharmacology, neuroscience and oncology have identified Carabin, a protein that turns down immune responses in cultured white blood cells. Cells start making Carabin upon infection; the more accumulated Carabin, the less intense immune response. Like a built-in timer, Carabin prevents immune responses from going on too long.
Read the paper here:
Read the news release here.
1/21/07 Treating Muscles with Blood Pressure Drug
People affected with muscle degenerative diseases like Duchenne muscular dystrophy or Marfan syndrome are unable to maintain or build muscle mass. Using mice, Hal Dietz, Ronald Cohn and colleagues at the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine have discovered that excess activity of the protein TGF-beta causes weakened and small muscles not only in Marfan mice, but in mice modeled to have Duchenne muscular dystrophy as well. They show that blocking TGF-beta activity with either neutralizing antibodies or the FDA-approved drug losartan (sold as Cozaar) reverses muscle wasting in both Marfan mice and Duchenne muscular dystrophy mice.
Read the paper here.
Read the news release here.
NEWS BRIEFS:
12/7/06 Peter Espenshade, Ph.D. Wins Burroughs Wellcome Award
Peter Espenshade, Ph.D., an assistant professor of cell biology, won a 2006 Investigators in Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease Award for his accomplishments as an independent researcher and his scientific excellence and innovation.
1/23/07 Betty Doan Awarded Cancer Prevention Research Grant
Betty Doan, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Giovanni Parmigiani, was awarded a grant for her research on a lung cancer prediction model by the Cancer Research and Prevention Foundation.
1/26/07 Andy Feinberg, M.D., Now Also a Ph.D.
Andrew Feinberg, M.D., King Fahd Professor of Medicine and molecular biology and genetics, was awarded the Doctor of Philosphy, Honoris Causa, from the School of Natural Sciences of Uppsala University. Feinberg was bestowed his degree at a ceremony in Sweden and honored for his contributions to cancer and epigenetics. Uppsala University was founded in 1477 and is the oldest university in the Nordic countries.
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