Discoveries

The lab of Kathy DelGiorno, assistant professor of cell and developmental biology, seeks to understand changes in the pancreas in response to injury and disease. In a recent project led by graduate student Leah Caplan, also from the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, the lab investigated the formation of… Read More

William Wan, assistant professor of biochemistry at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine Basic Sciences, has been named a 2022  Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences.  “As a Pew Scholar, our lab will use and develop cutting-edge methods like cryo-electron tomography to determine how… Read More

Staphylococcus aureus (“staph”) is an increasingly antibiotic-resistant bacterial pathogen that can cause a variety of life-threatening illnesses.  Researchers at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine have developed integrated molecular imaging techniques that can produce 3D views of the battle between invading pathogens and the body’s immune defenses down… Read More

In the early 1960s, young Larry Marnett received his amateur radio license from the Federal Communications Commission. He put up an antenna outside his Kansas City, Kansas, home and began tapping away in Morse code. “It was just so cool to be ‘talking’ to someone in California or Canada,” Marnett… Read More

The appendages that protrude from a mosquito’s head hold the sensory systems that account for nearly all of its ability to detect and respond to a wide range of chemical signals that are critical for its reproduction and its survival. At the molecular level, these systems rely on genes that… Read More

Type 2 diabetes, which affects more than 30 million Americans, increases risk of cardiovascular disease. Nearly 70% of people with Type 2 diabetes die from heart disease or stroke.  Maureen Gannon, PhD, and colleagues investigated the role of the inflammatory lipid signaling molecule PGE2 — acting through… Read More

We need zinc: one-tenth of the proteins in our cells require this metal for their normal functions in all aspects of cell metabolism. We acquire zinc by eating it — in foods or multivitamin supplements — but up to 30% of people in some parts of the world are at… Read More

An international team that included researchers from Vanderbilt University Medical Center has discovered a molecular switch that induces rapid proliferation of zymogen granule-secreting chief cells in the stomach to regenerate damaged tissue. The finding, which was reported earlier this month in the journal Cell Stem Cell, may be crucial… Read More

Obesity is an inflammatory condition that can damage tissues throughout the body, resulting in increased risk for cardiovascular disease, insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes and possibly kidney disease. The agents of inflammation are immune cells called macrophages, which accumulate in fatty tissue, and which produce inflammatory chemicals called cytokines. But… Read More

Structure of a caveolin-1 complex obtained using cryo-electron microscopy. A protomer, or a structural unit, is highlighted in magenta. The image was cropped to focus on panel A of Figure 1 of the paper, modified and published here in accordance to a CC BY-NC 4.0 license. Read More