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Christi Salsbury-Ruf (Zinkel Lab) featured in Reporter article
Feb. 12, 2019—Jan. 31, 2019, 9:40 AM From left, Sandra Zinkel, MD, PhD, Christi Salisbury-Ruf, MS, Patrice Wagner, PhD, Jing Zou, MD, PhD, and Yuliya Hassan have linked a specific form of programmed cell death to myelodysplastic syndrome, a type of bone marrow failure. by Leigh MacMillan The production of blood cells in the bone marrow —...
Alissa Guarnaccia named 2018 Vanderbilt Prize Student Scholar
Jan. 28, 2019—Vanderbilt Prize winner Amon to speak at Jan. 31 lecture Jan. 24, 2019, 10:30 AM by Bill Snyder Angelika Amon, PhD, recipient of the 2018 Vanderbilt Prize in Biomedical Science, will deliver her Vanderbilt Prize lecture at 4 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 31, in 208 Light Hall. Angelika Amon, PhD Amon, whose groundbreaking investigations of chromosome...
Building a pancreas
Jan. 24, 2019—Jan. 17, 2019, 10:15 AM by Leigh MacMillan (iStock) In the developing pancreas, seemingly equivalent progenitor cells differentiate into the four types of hormone-positive islet cells: alpha, beta, gamma and delta. Insulin-secreting beta cells are destroyed in type 1 diabetes, and understanding how beta cells develop could lead to new cellular or regenerative therapeutic strategies...
Breast cancer-killing RIG
Jan. 15, 2019—Dec. 13, 2018, 10:00 AM by Leigh MacMillan Immune checkpoint inhibitors — cancer therapies that remove the “brakes” on the adaptive anti-tumor immune response — have had remarkable success in melanoma and lung cancer. Response rates to these immunotherapies in breast cancer have been disappointing, perhaps because breast cancers are less “immunogenic” and contain fewer...
The exocyst dynamo
Dec. 18, 2018—Dec. 13, 2018, 9:45 AM by Bill Snyder (iStock) The exocyst is a protein complex essential for life, that is comprised of eight subunits and is a crucial component in vesicle trafficking. The mechanisms by which exocysts assemble and deliver vesicles containing important biological materials to the cell surface has been unclear, especially in mammalian...
Team seeks to create gene expression map of worm’s nervous system
Dec. 12, 2018—by Leigh MacMillan How do you build a brain? What “rules” govern where neurons end up, how they connect to each other, and which functions they perform? “Most of the information that you need to create this extraordinarily complex network of connected cells — the brain — is genetically encoded. The overall architecture is a...
Analyzing single-cell landscapes
Dec. 12, 2018—Nov. 29, 2018, 11:00 AM by Leigh MacMillan Single-cell RNA sequencing is a powerful tool for studying cellular diversity, for example in cancer where varied tumor cell types determine diagnosis, prognosis and response to therapy. Single-cell technologies generate hundreds to thousands of data points per sample, generating a need for new methods to define cell...
Andrea Page-McCaw Elected AAAS Fellow
Nov. 29, 2018—Five Vanderbilt University faculty members have been elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science this year. They are among 416 fellows from around the country selected by their peers for membership in the world’s largest general scientific society “because of their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications.” Vanderbilt...
Evading cell death
Nov. 28, 2018—Nov. 8, 2018, 1:30 PM by Amanda Johnson Cancer cells can develop resistance to the treatments designed to eliminate them. Several studies have linked stress granules (SGs), cell organelles that form transiently in response to extracellular stress, to this phenomenon. However, how SGs protect cancer cells remains unclear. Susan Wente, PhD, and Laura Glass, PhD, report...
Nilay Taneja received 11th place at the Nikon Small World Photomicrography contest
Oct. 22, 2018—Nilay Taneja (Burnette Lab) recently received 11th place at the Nikon Small World Photomicrography contest for his submission, “Human fibroblast undergoing cell division, showing actin (gray), myosin II (green) and DNA (magenta),” using structured illumination microscopy at Vanderbilt’s Nikon Center of Excellence facility.