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

heavy metals

Low-level cadmium toxicity and fatty liver disease

A recent study concluded that it’s more difficult for adults today to maintain the same weight as those a few decades ago, even with the same levels of food intake and exercise. On one level, this news is comforting to anyone in middle age, who may have been athletic as a teenager in the 1980s but isn’t anymore. It’s just harder nowadays!

However, the study authors also suggested, in an interview with The Atlantic’s Olga Khazan, an array of factors that might be contributing to the rise in obesity: exposure to chemicals such as pesticides and flame retardants, prescription drugs such as antidepressants, and altered microbiomes linked with antibiotic use in livestock.

The heavy metal cadmium may belong on that list of chemicals, not primarily as a booster of obesity, but instead in connection with the increase in prevalence in NAFLD (non-alcoholic fatty liver disease) over the last few decades.

Researchers led by Young-Mi Go and Dean Jones exposed mice to low levels of cadmium, so that the amounts of cadmium in their livers were comparable to those present in average middle age Americans, without tobacco or occupational exposure. They observed that cadmium-treated mice had more fat accumulation in the liver and elevated liver enzymes in their blood, compared with control mice with 10 times less cadmium.

Cadmium accumulates in the body over time. Tobacco smoke and the industrial workplace can be routes for cadmium exposure, but food is the major source for most non-smokers. Until the 1990s, most batteries were made with cadmium, and much cadmium production still goes into batteries. It is also found in paint and in corrosion-resistant steel. Read more

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