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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Collin Weber

Islet transplants from fish?

The shortage of human organ donors has led scientists to investigate animals as a potential source for transplantable organs or tissues. Pigs are often mentioned because of their size: similar to ours.

Recently, prospects for xenotransplantation brightened when Harvard geneticist George Church demonstrated the removal of dozens of endogenous retroviruses from the pig genome, in a tour de force of the CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing technique.

Emory researchers Susan Safley and Collin Weber have been exploring the possibility of using different animals for xenotransplantation: fish, specifically tilapia.

Why fish? This review details several advantages tilapia may offer in the field of islet transplant, but first – a reminder about islets.

Islets are the clusters of cells in the pancreas that produce insulin. Several clinical trials, including this one led by Emory’s Nicole Turgeon, have shown that islets isolated from deceased human donors can restore normal blood sugar regulation in patients with type 1 diabetes. Still, obstacles remain such as the shortage of human islets, and the loss of insulin independence over time, even with the use of drugs that hold off immune rejection.

For islet transplant, here are some of the proposed advantages presented by tilapia:

*tilapia have large, distinct islet organs called Brockmann bodies that are easy to isolate

*tilapia grow quickly and cost less to raise than pigs

*tilapia islets are resistant to hypoxia, thought to contribute to graft loss

*tilapia do not express alpha (1,3) gal, a carbohydrate structure present on mammalian cells that causes hyperacute rejection Read more

Posted on November 5, 2015 by Quinn Eastman in Immunology Leave a comment