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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telomeres

Emory clinical research highlights for #AHA16

Clinical research presentations at 2016 American Heart Association Scientific Sessions: telomeres + circulating progenitor cells, food deserts, and troponin as risk marker for atrial fibrillation.

 

Telomere Shortening, Regenerative Capacity, and Cardiovascular Outcomes Nov. 13, 4:45 pm, Room 346-347

Aging, in general, depletes our bodies’ regenerative capacities. Arshed Quyyumi, MD and colleagues at Emory Clinical Cardiovascular Research Institute have shown how circulating progenitor cells or CPCs, which regenerate blood vessels and correlate with outcomes in cardiovascular disease, are a finite resource.

Working with Quyyumi, research fellow Muhammad Hammadah, MD is presenting data on how telomere length interacts with the levels of CPCs, in a study of mental stress ischemia in 566 patients with stable coronary artery disease. Telomeres tend to shorten with ageing and cellular stress, and their length has been a widely studied biomarker.

Hammadah concludes that low leukocyte telomere length is associated with decreased regenerative capacity, independently of age and cardiovascular risk factors. However, telomere length and CPC levels are independent and additive predictors of adverse cardiovascular outcomes (such as death, heart attack, stroke, or hospitalization for heart failure), he finds. Hammadah is a finalist for the Elizabeth Barrett-Connor Research Award for Young Investigators in Training. Read more

Posted on November 11, 2016 by Quinn Eastman in Heart Leave a comment

Anti-aging tricks from dietary supplement seen in mice

Our recent news item on a Cell Reports paper from ShiQin Xiong and Wayne Alexander describes a connection between two important biological molecules: the exercise-induced transcription coactivator PGC1-alpha and the enzyme telomerase, sometimes described as a “fountain of youth” because telomeres protect the ends of chromosomes.

While the Emory researchers did not directly assess the effects of exercise in their experiments, their findings provide molecular clues to how exercise might slow the effects of aging or chronic disease in some cell types.

Xiong and Alexander found that the dietary supplement alpha lipoic acid (ALA) can stimulate telomerase, with positive effects in a mouse model of atherosclerosis. ALA is a sulfur-containing fatty acid used to treat diabetic neuropathy in Germany, and has previously been shown to combat atherosclerosis in animal models. The Emory authors’ main focus was on vascular smooth muscle cells and note that more study of ALA’s effects on other cell types is needed.

Below are four key references that may help you put the Cell Reports paper in context: Read more

Posted on August 24, 2015 by Quinn Eastman in Uncategorized Leave a comment

Congrats to the telomere/ribosome Nobelists

Congratulations to Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider and Jack Szostak for the 2009 Nobel Prize in medicine. The award is for their work on telomeres, the protective caps on the ends of chromosomes that shorten with every cell division and need specialized enzymes to be replenished.

Greider, Blackburn and Szostak discovered telomerase, the enzyme that copies the ends of chromosomes using a special RNA template. Telomerase is turned off in most human cells, but cancer cells often must reactivate it so that they can keep dividing like crazy.

The discovery of telomerase has led to new leads for potential anticancer drugs. This is a good example of the impact basic research can have on medicine, since the prize-winners were not thinking about anticancer drugs in the 1980s when they were doing their work.

Telomeres are specialized protective structures at the ends of chromosomes

Telomeres are specialized protective structures at the ends of chromosomes

The telomere trio’s work relates to several lines of research at Emory.

Immunologist Cornelia Weyand and her colleagues have shown that the telomeres of T cells are abnormally shortened in patients with rheumatoid arthritis. In effect, their cells’ chromosomes are prematurely aged. This result provides some hints on how to treat autoimmune diseases.

If blood-forming stem cells can’t keep their telomeres in shape, they can’t continue to regenerate the blood. Pathologist Hinh Ly’s research has made a connection between genetic defects in telomere maintenance and bone marrow failure syndrome in human patients.

Geneticists Christa Martin and David Ledbetter have been probing the relationship between mutations or recombination in the regions of the chromosome adjacent to telomeres and developmental disorders such as autism and mental retardation.

The 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, awarded to Venki Ramakrishnan, Tom Steitz and Ada Yonath, has an even stronger connection to Emory. Christine Dunham, part of a growing contingent of crystallographers here, worked on ribosome structure in Ramakrishnan’s lab at the MRC.

The ribosome is a machine that decodes mRNA and produces protein step by step

The ribosome is a machine that decodes mRNA and produces protein step by step

She is examining the molecular details of how antibiotics and viruses perturb ribosome function.

What the two Nobels have in common is that they both honor work on molecular machines containing RNA, connections to the ancient, shadowy “RNA world“.

Posted on October 7, 2009 by Quinn Eastman in Uncategorized Leave a comment