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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single cell techniques

Diabetic foot ulcers: cell types identified that may contribute to healing

Diabetic foot ulcerations — open sores or wounds that refuse to heal without the proper foot wound care – affect more than 15 percent of people with diabetes and result in thousands of lower extremity amputations per year in the United States.

To gain a better understanding of diabetic foot ulcers’ biology, a team of researchers at Emory and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston compared cells taken from patients with ulcers that healed to those taken from patients whose ulcers failed to heal, as well as to cells taken from intact forearm skin in patients with and without diabetes.

The team identified a subpopulation of fibroblasts enriched in the foot ulcers that healed, pointing to potential interventions. The results were published in Nature Communications on January 10.

“In this study, we present a comprehensive single cell map of the diabetic foot ulcer microenvironment,” says Manoj Bhasin, PhD, associate professor of pediatrics and biomedical informatics at Emory University School of Medicine, who is co-corresponding author of the study. “To our knowledge, we are the first to identify a unique subpopulation of fibroblasts that are significantly enriched in diabetic foot ulcers that are destined to heal.”

Various cell types, including endothelial cells, fibroblasts, keratinocytes and immune cells, were known to play an important role in wound healing processes. Yet diabetic foot ulcerations’ failure to heal and high associated mortality remain poorly understood.

“Our data suggests that specific fibroblast subtypes are key players in healing these ulcers and targeting these cells could be one therapeutic option,” says co-corresponding author Aristidis Veves, DSc, MD, director of the Rongxiang Xu, MD, Center for Regenerative Therapeutics and research director of the Joslin-Beth Israel Deaconess Foot Center. “While further testing is needed, our data set will be a valuable resource for diabetes, dermatology and wound healing research and can serve as the baseline for designing experiments for the assessment of therapeutic interventions.”

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Posted on January 10, 2022 by Quinn Eastman in Uncategorized Leave a comment

Dissecting atherosclerosis at the single cell level: tasting each piece of a fruit salad

More than a decade ago, Hanjoong Jo and colleagues developed an elegant animal model allowing the dissection of atherosclerosis. It was the first to definitively show that disturbed patterns of blood flow determine where atherosclerotic plaques will later appear.

In atherosclerosis, arterial walls thicken and harden because of a gradual build-up of lipids, cholesterol and white blood cells, which occurs over the course of years in humans. The Jo lab’s model involves restricting blood flow in the carotid artery of mice, which are fed a high-fat diet and also have mutations in a gene (ApoE) involved in processing fat and cholesterol. The physical intervention causes atherosclerosis to appear within a couple weeks. Inflammation in endothelial cells, which line blood vessels, is visible within 48 hours.

The shear-sensitive gene LMO4 is turned on in the middle boxed region, but not the other two, because of disturbed flow in that area of the aorta

Now Jo’s lab has combined the model with recently developed techniques that permit scientists to see molecular changes in single cells. The results were published Tuesday in Cell Reports.

Jo’s lab is in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Emory and Georgia Tech.

Previously, when they saw inflammation in blood vessels, researchers could not distinguish between intrinsic changes in endothelial cells and immune or other cells infiltrating into the blood vessel lining.

A video made by Harvard scientists who developed the single cell techniques describes the difference like this. Looking at the molecules in cells with standard techniques is like making a fruit smoothie – everything is blended together. But single cell techniques allow them to taste and evaluate each piece of fruit individually.

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Posted on December 15, 2020 by Quinn Eastman in Heart Leave a comment