Bromine Discovery Announcement

Discovery Makes Bromine 28th Element Essential For Tissue Development

In a paper recently published in the journal Cell (Volume 157, Issue 6, p1380–1392, 5 June 2014), Vanderbilt University researchers establish for the first time that bromine, among the 92 naturally occurring chemical elements in the universe, is the 28th element essential for tissue development in all animals, from primitive sea creatures to humans.

“Without bromine, there are no animals. That’s the discovery,” said Billy Hudson, Ph.D., the paper’s senior author and Elliott V. Newman Professor of Medicine.

The report is the latest in a series of landmark papers by the Vanderbilt group that have helped define how collagen IV scaffolds undergird the basement membrane of all tissues, including the kidney’s filtering units.

We congratulate Dr. Hudson and his colleagues on this important discovery!

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