Lab Technician: Ms. Carol Anderson

Lab Technician and Lab Manager

Carol Anderson obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Microbiology and Biochemistry from the University of Manitoba, Canada. She joined the Nath lab as a technician in 1992 and currently also manages the lab. She has worked on several projects over the years most of which were related to the study of HIV neuropathogenesis. She has also assisted in the training of nearly all students and postdoctoral fellows that have come through the lab. She helped develop the techniques for culturing primary human fetal neurons and for Tat protein purification and has authored over 20 manuscripts since she joined this lab. She has a wide range of technical skills. One of her current projects is to develop and refine techniques for measuring the protein carbonyl derivatives of Pro, Arg, Lys, and Thr. These derivatives are chemically stable and serve as markers of oxidative stress in biological systems. The current method involves derivatization of the carbonyl group with dinitrophenylhydrazine (DNPH) followed by immunoblotting using a slot-blot apparatus from Biorad and an anti-DNPH antibody. However, there is high background with this method, and there is a lot of normalizing between the immunoblots to compare these samples, hence she is trying to modify the procedure to use an ELISA based system for measuring these protein carbonyls. An ELISA method would allow the quantitation to be much easier, more sensitive and more reliable.

Carol is also studying the mechanism of immune reactivation syndrome within the CNS of HIV infected patients. It has been found that in some patients there is massive infiltration of cytotoxic lymphocytes within the brain of HIV infected patients hence likely these cells may mediate neurodegeneration by the release of toxic substances such as granzyme B. However, the mechanism by which these cells become activated remains unclear. She has recently discovered that the multifunctional “Tat” protein of HIV activates the lymphocytes to proliferate and secrete granzyme B. It isn’t a huge activation, but may explain in part the chronic development of dementia in some patients. She will now determine the mechanisms of Tat-induced activation of the lymphocytes.