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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muscles

The creeping edges of cells: lamellipodia

Lamellipodia with red box
This month’s Image feature highlights lamellipodia, the thin sheet-like regions at the leading edges of migrating cells. Lamellipodia act as tiny creeping motors that pull the cell forward.

To help visualize lamellipodia, Adriana Simionescu-Bankston, a graduate student in Grace Pavlath’s lab, provided us with this photo of muscle cells. The red box shows an example of lamellipodia. Notice the edge of the cell, where the green color is more intense.

The green color comes from FITC-phalloidin, which stains F-actin, the Ray Ban outlet filaments that make up a large part of the cells’ internal skeleton. (Phalloidin is an actin-binding toxin originally isolated from death cap mushrooms, and FITC is what makes it green.) The blue color comes from DAPI, a dye that stains the DNA in the nucleus.

Simionescu-Bankston and Pavlath recently published a paper in the journal Developmental Biology, examining the function of a protein called Bin3 in muscle development and regeneration. They found that Bin3 appears to regulate lamellipodia formation; in mice that lack Bin3, muscle cells have fewer lamellipodia and the muscle tissues regenerate slower after injury. Bin3 is also important in the eye, since the “knockout” mice develop cataracts soon after birth.

 

Posted on August 20, 2013 by Quinn Eastman in Uncategorized Leave a comment