A once-a-month electronic newsletter of basic, preclinical and translational
research news from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Please forward
freely. Browse back issues of the e-Newsletter in the archive.
RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS:
Running Out of Gas? Fine-Tune Oxygen Use
Robotic Biopsies?
Solitary Cell Fusion
Unlocking the Keys to Disease
Structure and Function
Phosphorylation at Your Fingertips
Putting Cancer in Deep Sleep
New Uses for Old Antifungals
Genetics of Diabetes
Smell Stem Cells
NEWS BRIEFS:
Congratulations to Young Investigators
Young Hopkins Entrepreneurs Win Top Prize
Sol Snyder Awarded Albany Medical Prize
Akira Sawa and Russell Margolis win NARSAD Awards
Nancy Craig Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences
RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS:
4/5/07 Running Out of Gas? Fine-Tune Oxygen Use
The manufacture of cellular energy requires oxygen, but under certain stressful conditions cells find themselves low on the gas. Now, Gregg Semenza and colleagues in the vascular biology program of the Institute for Cell Engineering have discovered that cells swap one protein subunit for an energy-efficient one in the powerhouse mitochondria to maintain energy production under low oxygen conditions.
Read the paper here.
Read the news release here.
4/6/07 Robotic Biopsies?
Precisely aimed diagnostic procedures would benefit greatly from high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging, yet the strong magnetic field precludes using metals or electrical instruments. Now, Dan Stoianovici and colleagues in the urology robotics lab have designed and built a remote-controlled, light- and air-driven motor made entirely of plastic, ceramic and rubber that is used to power a robot that takes prostate biopsies.
Read the paper here.
Read the news release here.
4/10/07 Solitary Cell Fusion
Certain biological processes, such as the formation of muscle fibers, require the fusion of individual cells into a larger, multinucleated structure. Elizabeth Chen in Molecular Biology and Genetics and her lab have found that the Solitary protein is a key regulator of this fusion process. Solitary guides the actin skeleton to the site where the two cells will join together, enabling the molecular fusion machinery to travel to the cell surface without getting lost.
Read the paper here.
Read the news release here.
4/13/07 Unlocking the Keys to Disease
Membrane proteins make up approximately 30 percent of our proteome and are responsible for numerous critical functions. However, their biochemical properties make certain applications difficult, such as screening by the yeast two-hybrid system. Susan Michaelis in Cell Biology and colleagues in Toronto have overcome these problems with iMYTH (integrated membrane yeast two-hybrid system). They successfully used iMYTH in yeast to identify protein interactions among the ABC transporter proteins.
Read the paper here.
4/17/07 Structure and Function
How does a membrane-embedded protease whose active site is 10 angstroms below the surface access its membrane-bound substrate? Through thorough mutagenesis and functional studies, Sinisa Urban and colleagues in Molecular Biology and Genetics have generated more than 40 mutants and identified the molecular gate that swings open and lets the substrate into the enzyme’s active site.
Read the paper here.
4/23/07 Phosphorylation at Your Fingertips
Phosphorylated proteins often don’t weather well the rough and tumble process required to prepare them for analysis by mass spectrometry—phosphate groups can fall off. Using a kinder, gentler preparation called electron transfer dissociation, Akhilesh Pandey and colleagues at the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine now have catalogued 1,435 total possible phosphorylation events in human kidney cells. These 20-plus years of data are available online in a new database called PhosphoMotif Finder.
Read the PNAS paper here.
Read the Nature Biotechnology paper here.
Read the news release here.
4/25/07 Putting Cancer in Deep Sleep
As a fail-safe mechanism, cells normally commit suicide when their telomeres become too short. Crossing a mouse model of lymphoma with a mouse model lacking telomerase, Carol Greider and David Feldser have uncovered an alternate pathway whereby short telomeres induce permanent cell-cycle arrest, or senescence. Further study of these two complementary pathways might lead to new ways of preventing or treating cancer by interfering safely with telomerase and the cell-suicide system.
Read the paper here.
Read the news release here.
4/26/07 New Uses for Old Antifungals
A pair of Hopkins studies has identified some additional therapeutic potential for a pair of antifungal agents. Min Li in Neuroscience found that zinc pyrithione, the active ingredient of many dandruff shampoos, is a potent activator of nerve-relaxing potassium channels; this finding may lead to future epilepsy treatments. Meanwhile, Jun Liu in Pharmacology identified itraconazole, commonly used to treat topical fungal infections, as a potent inhibitor of angiogenesis, paving the way for this drug to treat cancer and other diseases.
Read the zinc pyrithione/epilepsy paper here.
Read the zinc pyrithione/epilepsy news release here.
Read the itraconazole/angiogenesis paper here.
Read the itraconazole/angiogenesis news release here.
4/26/07 Genetics of Diabetes
Type 2 diabetes is a complicated disease arising from genetic, environmental and behavioral factors. Scientists at the Center for Inherited Disease Research, working with others at institutions around the world, now have identified four new genetic variants and confirmed another six that are associated with increased risk of diabetes. Using genome-wide association techniques, the team analyzed DNA from more than 2,300 Finnish people and compared their results with genome scans of 8,000 other Swedish, Finnish and British people. To compare and confirm findings, researchers collaborated with investigators from three other studies, making this one of the largest genome-wide association efforts to date, involving genomes of more than 32,000 people.
Read the paper here.
4/29/07 Smell Stem Cells
Randy Reed in Neuroscience and colleagues have found that the olfactory system contains a reserve supply of stem cells. After exposing mice to methyl bromide gas, the researchers found that a population of cells that normally lies dormant sprang to life and helped repair the damage to olfactory nerves and surrounding tissue. The presence of these backup stem cells, a first for neuronal tissue, ensures that the olfactory system can retain its function even after severe damage.
Read the paper here.
Read the news release here.
NEWS BRIEFS:
4/19/07 Congratulations to This Year’s Young Investigators!
The Michael A. Shanoff Research Award went to Curtis R. Chong for “Two approaches to drug discovery,” working with Jun O. Liu in Pharmacology and David Sullivan in Molecular Microbiology and Immunology.
The Nupur Dinesh Thekdi Research Award went to Cheuk T. Leung for “Roles of olfactory neural stem cells in tissue maintenance and regeneration,” working with Randall Reed in Neuroscience.
The Hans Joaquim Prochaska Research Award went to Justin R. Bailey for “Analysis of virus and immune responses in HIV-1-infected elite suppressors,” working with Robert Siliciano in Medicine.
The David Israel Macht Research Award went to Adam L. Hughes for “Dap1/PGRMC1 binds and regulates cytochrome P450 enzymes,” working with Peter Espenshade in Cell Biology.
The Martin and Carol Macht Research Award went to Seyun Kim for “A role of keratin cytoskeleton in the regulation of mTOR, translation, and growth,” working with Pierre Coulombe in Biological Chemistry.
The Alicia Showalter Reynolds Research Award went to Renee N. Domergue for “Expression patterns and regulation of a Candida glabrata virulence factor,” working with Brendan Cormack in Molecular Biology and Genetics.
The Mette Strand Research Award went to Gabriela Caraveo Piso for “Action of TFII-I outside the nucleus as an inhibitor of agonist-induced calcium entry,” working with Stephen Desiderio in Molecular Biology and Genetics.
The four Paul Ehrlich Research Awards went to Young Kwon, for “Regulation of TRPC channels by phosphoinositide signaling,” working with Craig Montell in Biological Chemistry and Neuroscience; to Steven J. Eliades for “Auditory-vocal interactions in the primate auditory cortex, working with Xiaoqin Wang in Biomedical Engineering; to Hsi-Wen R. Liao for “Identification and characterization of a new retinal photoreceptor,” working with King-Wai Yau in Neuroscience; and to Kaisorn L. Chaichana for “Ascertaining the phenotype of migrating GBM-derived cells under mitogenic stimulation,” working with Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa in Neurosurgical Oncology.
The Helen B. Taussig Research Award went to Megan Wind-Rotolo for “Identification of drug resistant HIV-1 in the latent reservoir following single-dose nevirapine,” working with Robert Siliciano in Medicine.
The two W. Barry Wood Jr. Research Awards went to Rashna Bhandari for “Protein pyrophosphorylation, a potential cell signal,” working with Solomon H. Snyder in Neuroscience; and to Ye V. Liu for “RACK1 is required for O2-independent and 17-AAG-induced HIF-1a degradation,” working with Gregg L. Semenza at the Institute for Cell Engineering.
The Daniel Nathans Research Award went to Hiroshi Nishiyama for “Branch type-specific structural plasticity of axons,” working with David Linden in Neuroscience.
The Alfred Blalock Research Award went to Tobias Sjöblom for “The consensus coding sequences of human breast and colorectal cancers,” working with Victor Velculescu in Oncology-Cancer Biology.
The Albert Lehninger Research Award went to Michael J. Eddins for “Structural insight into polyubiquitin chain formation and recognition,” working with Cynthia Wolberger in Biophysics and Biophysical Chemistry.
The A. McGehee Harvey Research Award went to Danil V. Makarov for “Predicting the need to treat low-grade, low-stage prostate cancer,” working with Alan W. Partin in Urology.
Read more about Young Investigators’ Day here.
3/26/07 Young Hopkins Entrepreneurs Win Top Prize
ResuRx Pharmaceuticals, developed by M.D./Ph.D. candidate Curtis Chong and biomedical engineering undergraduate Joynita Sur, won the grand prize at the 2007 Rice University Business Plan Competition. Their plan reduces the cost and time for drug discovery by determining new uses for existing drugs and re-introducing them to the market.
Read the Rice announcement here.
4/26/07 Sol Snyder Awarded Albany Medical Prize
For his work on how proteins on cell surfaces enable cells to communicate with each other, Solomon H. Snyder, Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, has been honored with the 2007 Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research. Snyder shares the $500,000 prize with Robert J. Lefkowitz of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C., and Ronald M. Evans of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif.
Read the news release here.
4/12/07 Akira Sawa and Russell Margolis win NARSAD Awards
The National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD) has honored psychiatric neurobiologist Russell Margolis a $100,000 Distinguished Investigator grant and neuroscientist Akira Sawa the 2007 Staglin Family Music Festival Schizophrenia Research Award. This award for $250,000 is made annually to a leading researcher in the field of schizophrenia.
Read the NARSAD announcement here.
4/30/07 Nancy Craig Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Nancy Craig in Molecular Biology and Genetics, whose genome plasticity studies include how cells control moving genetic elements and DNA repair, last week joined former Vice President Albert Gore Jr., New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and filmmaker Spike Lee in the newest class of fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The academy conducts a wide range of interdisciplinary studies and public-policy research tapping into its broad-based membership.
Read the academy’s announcement here.
Find more Hopkins news here.
