Warren symposium follows legacy of geneticist giant

If we want to understand how the brain creates memories, and how genetic disorders distort the brain’s machinery, then the fragile X gene is an ideal place to start. That’s why the Stephen T. Warren Memorial Symposium, taking place November 28-29 at Emory, will be a significant event for those interested in neuroscience and genetics. Stephen T. Warren, 1953-2021 Warren, the founding chair of Emory’s Department of Human Genetics, led an international team that discovered Read more

Mutations in V-ATPase proton pump implicated in epilepsy syndrome

Why and how disrupting V-ATPase function leads to epilepsy, researchers are just starting to figure Read more

Tracing the start of COVID-19 in GA

At a time when COVID-19 appears to be receding in much of Georgia, it’s worth revisiting the start of the pandemic in early 2020. Emory virologist Anne Piantadosi and colleagues have a paper in Viral Evolution on the earliest SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequences detected in Georgia. Analyzing relationships between those virus sequences and samples from other states and countries can give us an idea about where the first COVID-19 infections in Georgia came from. We can draw Read more
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bone loss

Everything in moderation, especially TH17 cells

I was struck by one part of Mirko Paiardini’s paper that was published this week in Journal of Clinical Investigation. It describes a treatment aimed at repairing immune function in SIV-infected monkeys, with an eye toward helping people with HIV one day. One of the goals of their IL-21 treatment is to restore intestinal Th17 cells, which are depleted by viral infection. In this context, IL-21’s effect is anti-inflammatory.

However, Th17 cells are also involved in autoimmune disease. A recent Cell Metabolism paper from endocrinologist Roberto Pacifici and colleagues examines Th17 cells, with the goal of treating bone loss coming from an overactive parathyroid. In that situation, too many Th17 cells are bad and they need to be beaten back. Fortunately, both an inexpensive blood pressure medication and a drug under development for psoriasis seem to do just that.

Note for microbiome fans: connections between Th17 cells and intestinal microbes (segmented filamentous bacteria) are strengthening. It gets complicated because gut microbiota, together with Th17 cells, may influence metabolic disease and Th17-like cells are also in the skin — location matters.

Posted on November 11, 2015 by Quinn Eastman in Immunology Leave a comment

Bone-strengthening particles stimulate autophagy

Neale Weitzmann and George Beck have been publishing a series of papers describing how silica nanoparticles can increase bone mineral density in animals. Their findings could someday form the basis for a treatment for osteoporosis.

In 2012, we posted an article and video on this topic. We wanted to call attention to a few of the team’s recent papers, one of which probes the mechanism for a remarkable phenomenon: how can very fine silica particles stimulate bone formation?

The particles’ properties seem to depend on their size: 50 nanometers wide – smaller than a HIV or influenza vision. In a 2014 ACS Nano paper, Beck, Weitzmann and postdoc Shin-Woo Ha show that the particles interact with particular proteins involved in the process of autophagy, a process of “self digestion” induced by stress.

“These studies suggest that it is not the material per se that stimulates autophagy but rather size or shape,” they write. Read more

Posted on July 6, 2015 by Quinn Eastman in Uncategorized Leave a comment