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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Ponce Cente

Secrets of the elite: Effective immune control of HIV

A small minority of individuals infected with HIV — about one in 300 – are naturally able to suppress viral replication with their immune systems, and can keep HIV levels extremely low for years. Doctors have named these individuals “elite controllers.”

“These individuals have naturally achieved the outcome sought by HIV vaccine researchers worldwide.  Studying them will ultimately inform the design of a more effective HIV vaccine,” says Vincent Marconi, a physician-scientist at Grady Health System’s Infectious Disease Clinic on Ponce de Leon and an associate professor in the Emory School of Medicine.

Vincent Marconi, MD

Marconi is a co-author (along with investigators at over 200 institutions) on a genomics study of elite controllers published Thursday in Science Express. Led by Bruce Walker at Massachusetts General Hospital and Paul de Bakker at the Broad Institute and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, the team of researchers scanned through the genomes of close to 1,000 elite controllers and 2,600 people with progressive HIV infection. They identified several sites linked with immune control of HIV, all in a region encoding HLA proteins.

HLA proteins play key roles in activating T cell immunity, and are also necessary for the development of T cells. They grab onto segments of proteins, called peptides, inside the cell and carry them to the cell membrane. In the right context, certain viral peptides can mark infected cells for destruction by “killer” T cells.

Previously, MGH/MIT researchers theorized that people with certain forms of their HLA genes develop T cells with a restricted repertoire, yet broader activity. Their T cells would be more likely to still recognize HIV when the virus mutates. A drawback is that these individuals may have a higher risk for developing autoimmune diseases. The theory is described in more detail in this Nature News article.

Marconi is continuing his part of this research into what makes elite controllers’ immune systems special, which he began at the Department of Defense Infectious Disease Clinical Research Program, in collaboration with Eric Hunter, co-director of Emory’s Center for AIDS Research, and research associate Ling Yue at Emory Vaccine Center. The research is supported by the Center for AIDS Research and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Posted on November 5, 2010 by Quinn Eastman in Immunology Leave a comment