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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immune system

Scientists still searching for HIV’s lethal ways

Guido Silvestri, MD

It’s a knotty, complex question, and one that’s nearly 30 years old: how does HIV cause AIDS? That is, how does the virus slowly destroy the immune system?

Emory immunologist and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar Guido Silvestri, MD, and his colleagues are using a method called comparative AIDS research to try and answer that question. In other words, the scientists compare humans infected with HIV who develop AIDS and nonhuman primates from Africa who are infected with SIV, or simian immunodeficiency virus.

Silvestri is chief of the Division of Microbiology and Immunology at Yerkes National Primate Research Center.

Although SIV is very similar to HIV in terms of genetic and molecular structure, once infected with this virus, the Old World Monkey, the sooty mangabey, does not get sick.

“It’s a major mystery in AIDS research because these animals have virus replication that remains active in their body as long as they’re alive,” says Silvestri. “So, it’s not just the infection and the virus replicating that kills people. There’s something more that happens.”

Silvestri describes this research in Emory University’s Sound Science.

Posted on November 15, 2010 by admin in Immunology Leave a comment