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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Neuro

Fragile X regulation is a finely tuned machine

A PNAS paper published Monday demonstrates the kinds of insights that can be gleaned from a large scale sequencing project examining the fragile X gene.

Most children (boys, usually) who have fragile X syndrome have a particular mutation. An expanded “triplet repeat” stretch of DNA, which is outside the protein-coding region of the gene, puts the entire gene to sleep.

At Emory, geneticist Steve Warren, cell biologist Gary Bassell and colleagues have been identifying less common changes in the fragile X gene by looking in boys who are developmentally delayed, but don’t have the triplet repeat expansion. The first author of the paper is former postdoc Joshua Suhl, now at Booz Allen Hamilton in Massachusetts.

The authors describe two half-brothers who have the same genetic variant, which changes how production of the FMRP protein is regulated. These examples show that the fragile X gene is so central to how neurons function that several kinds of genetic glitches in it can make this finely tuned machine break down.

“This is a hot area and not much is known about it,” Warren says. Read more

Posted on November 10, 2015 by Quinn Eastman in Neuro Leave a comment

Gabbing about GABA — implications for hypersomnia treatments

Anesthesiologist Paul Garcia and his colleagues are presenting two posters at the Society of Neuroscience meeting this week, whose findings may raise concerns about two non-stimulant drugs Emory sleep specialists have studied for the treatment of hypersomnia: flumazenil and clarithromycin.

For both, the data is in vitro only, so caution is in order and more investigation may be needed.

With flumazenil, Garcia and colleagues found that when neurons are exposed to a low dose for 24 hours, the cells increase expression of some GABA receptor forms.

This could be part of a mechanism for tolerance. I heard some anecdotes describing how flumazenil’s wake-promoting effects wear off over time at the Hypersomnia Foundation conference in July, but it’s not clear how common the phenomenon is.

Flumazenil’s utility in hypersomnia became known after the pioneering experience of Anna Sumner, who has reported being able to use the medicine for years. See this 2013 story in Emory Medicine. Read more

Posted on October 21, 2015 by Quinn Eastman in Neuro Leave a comment

Epigenetic inheritance via sperm RNA

In 2013, Brian Dias (at Yerkes) and Kerry Ressler (now at Harvard) described a surprising example of epigenetic inheritance.

They found that a mouse, exposed to a smell in combination with stress, could transmit the resulting sensitivity to that smell to its offspring. At the time, there wasn’t a lot of information about mechanism.

Now other scientists have substantiated a proposal that micro RNA in playing a role in sperm. See this story (“Sperm RNAs transmit stress”) from Kate Yandell in The Scientist or this one from Rachel Zamzow at Spectrum, the Simons Foundation’s autism news site, for more. An added wrinkle is that this research shows that descendants of stress-exposed mice show a muted response to stress.

Note for Emory readers: Dias is scheduled to give a Frontiers in Neuroscience talk on Friday.

Posted on October 20, 2015 by Quinn Eastman in Neuro Leave a comment

Tools for illuminating brain function make their own light

Optogenetics has taken neuroscience by storm in recent years because the technique allows scientists to study the brain conveniently in animals, activating or inhibiting selected groups of neurons at the flip of a switch.  Most often, scientists use a fiber optic cable to deliver light into the brain.

Researchers at Emory and Georgia Tech have developed tools that could allow neuroscientists to put aside the fiber optic cable, and use a glowing protein from coral as the light source instead.

Biomedical engineering student Jack Tung and neurosurgeon/neuroscientist Robert Gross, MD, PhD have dubbed these tools “inhibitory luminopsins” because they inhibit neuronal activity both in response to light and to a chemical supplied from outside.

A demonstration of the luminopsins’ capabilities was published September 24 in the journal Scientific Reports.  The authors show that these tools enabled them to modulate neuronal firing, both in culture and in vivo, and modify the behavior of live animals.

Tung and Gross are now using inhibitory luminopsins to study ways to halt or prevent seizure activity in animals.

“We think that this approach may be particularly useful for modeling treatments for generalized seizures and seizures that involve multiple areas of the brain,” Tung says. “We’re also working on making luminopsins responsive to seizure activity: turning on the light only when it is needed, in a closed-loop feedback controlled fashion.” More here. Read more

Posted on September 29, 2015 by Quinn Eastman in Neuro Leave a comment

Trio with Emory roots probing PTSD-hypertension links

This grant announcement from the American Heart Association caught Lab Land’s eye. All three of the scientists involved in this project, examining the connections between hypertension, inflammation and the sympathetic nervous system in PTSD, have Emory connections:

*Kerry Ressler, previously Emory Psychiatry/HHMI-supported/Yerkes-based lab/Grady Trauma Project, who moved this summer to Harvard’s McLean Hospital

Related finding that emerged from the Grady Trauma Project: Blood pressure drugs linked with lower PTSD symptoms

*Paul Marvar, who worked with both David Harrison and Kerry Ressler at Emory, and is now at George Washington University

Related item on Marvar’s work: Immune cells required for stress-induced rise in blood pressure in animals

*Jeanie Park, kidney specialist who is here now! The grant is exploring the relationship between the sympathetic nervous system, regulation of blood pressure and PTSD.

2015 TV interview with Park on her chronic kidney disease research

Posted on September 22, 2015 by Quinn Eastman in Heart, Neuro Leave a comment

The buzz of consciousness and how seizures disrupt it

These days, it sounds a bit old-fashioned to ask the question: “Where is consciousness located in the brain?” The prevailing thinking is that consciousness lives in the network, rather than in one particular place. Still, neuroscientists sometimes get an intriguing glimpse of a critical link in the network.

A recent paper in the journal Epilepsy & Behavior describes an epilepsy patient who had electrodes implanted within her brain at Emory University Hospital, because neurologists wanted to understand where her seizures were coming from and plan possible surgery. Medication had not controlled her seizures and previous surgery elsewhere had not either.

ElectrodesSmaller

MRI showing electrode placement. Yellow outline indicates the location of the caudate and thalamus. Image from Leeman-Markowsi et al, Epilepsy & Behavior (2015).

During intracranial EEG monitoring, implanted electrodes detected a pattern of signals coming from one part of the thalamus, a central region of the brain. The pattern was present when the patient was conscious, and then stopped as soon as seizure activity made her lose awareness.

The pattern of signals had a characteristic frequency – around 35 times per second – so it helps to think of the signal as an auditory tone. Lead author Beth Leeman-Markowski, director of EUH’s Epilepsy Monitoring Unit at the time when the patient was evaluated, describes the signal as a “buzz.”

“That buzz has something to do with maintenance of consciousness,” she says. Read more

Posted on September 8, 2015 by Quinn Eastman in Neuro Leave a comment

Regenerative Engineering & Medicine highlights

Last week on Friday, Lab Land attended the annual Regenerative Engineering & Medicine center get-together to hear about progress in this exciting area.

During his talk, Tony Kim of Georgia Tech mentioned a topic that Rose Eveleth recently explored in The Atlantic: why aren’t doctors using amazing “nanorobots” yet? Or as Kim put it, citing a recent review, “So many papers and so few drugs.”

[A summary: scaling up is difficult, testing pharmacokinetics, toxicity and efficacy is difficult, and so is satisfying the FDA.]

The talks Friday emerged from REM seed grants; many paired an Emory medical researcher with a Georgia Tech biomedical engineer. All of these projects take on challenges in delivering regenerative therapies: getting cells or engineered particles to the right place in the body.

For example, cardiologist W. Robert Taylor discussed the hurdles his team had encountered in scaling up his cells-in-capsules therapies for cardiovascular diseases to pigs, in collaboration with Luke Brewster. The pre-pig phase of this research is discussed in more detail here and here. Read more

Posted on August 14, 2015 by Quinn Eastman in Heart, Neuro Leave a comment

Momentum at hypersomnia conference

A visitor might not realize this was a meeting devoted to people who experience excessive daytime sleepiness. The 2015 Hypersomnia Foundation Conference on Saturday was full of energy, with:

*more than 245 attendees, about twice as many people as last year’s conference

*medical experts from France, Wisconsin and Louisiana — in addition to Emory

*data from several recent clinical trials

*some signs of industry interest in hypersomnia

Hypersomnia is a sleep disorder in which individuals feel frequent or constant sleepiness and need to sleep for long portions of the day (more than 70 hours per week). It is distinct from other sleep disorders such as narcolepsy and sleep apnea, but its prevalence is still unclear. Conventional stimulants such as amphetamine or modafinil often can be used to treat the sleepiness, but some with hypersomnia find these drugs ineffective or hard to tolerate.

Previous research at Emory has shown that many individuals with hypersomnia have a substance in their spinal fluid that acts like a sleeping pill, enhancing the action of the neurotransmitter GABA. The identity of this mysterious substance is unknown, but Emory researchers report that they are close to identifying it. That could give hypersomnia a “molecular handle” similar to what narcolepsy has, with loss of hypocretin-producing neurons.

The terminology is still up in the air — keynote speaker Isabelle Arnulf from Paris said, “The term ‘idiopathic hypersomnia’ does not mean that you are an idiot.” Rather, she said, it means that even specialists can have trouble distinguishing hypersomnia from other sleep disorders, and “idiopathic” signifies that the detailed cause is still under investigation.

Read more

Posted on July 22, 2015 by Quinn Eastman in Neuro Leave a comment

Microbiome enthusiasm at Emory

At what point did the human microbiome become such a hot topic?

When it was shown that babies born by Cesarean section are colonized with different bacteria than those born vaginally? With the cardiovascular studies of microbial byproducts of meat digestion? With the advent of fecal transplant as a proposed treatment for Clostricium difficile infection?

The bacteria and other microbes that live within the human body are thought to influence not only digestive health, but metabolic and autoimmune diseases as well, possibly even psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders. The field is being propelled by next-generation sequencing technology, and Nature had to publish an editorial guarding against hype (a major theme: correlation is not causation).

At Emory, investigators from several departments are involved in microbiome-related work, and the number is expanding, and assembling a comprehensive list is becoming more difficult. Researchers interested in the topic are planning Emory’s first microbiome symposium in November, organized by Jennifer Mulle (read her intriguing review on autism spectrum disorders and the microbiome).

Microbial genomics expert Tim Read, infectious diseases specialist Colleen Kraft and intestinal pathologist Andrew Neish have formed an Emory microbiome interest group with a listserv and seminars.

Microbiome symposium sponsors: ACTSI, Hercules Exposome Center, Emory University School of Medicine, Omega Biotek, CFDE, Ubiome. Read more

Posted on June 30, 2015 by Quinn Eastman in Immunology, Neuro Leave a comment

Hypersomnia update: clarithromycin study

Screen Shot 2015-07-01 at 4.25.58 PM

From Emory Medicine, Spring 2013

A small clinical study of clarithromycin for the sleep disorder hypersomnia shows that the antibiotic can combat patients’ subjective experience of sleepiness, but it does not seem to improve reaction time measured in a video-game-type vigilance task.

The effects of clarithromycin in hypersomnia were first observed by Emory doctors when a pioneering patient (Anna Sumner, whose story is told in this Emory Medicine article) unexpectedly experienced sleeplessness when taking it for a respiratory infection.

The results of the study were published online by Annals of Neurology on June 10.

Lynn Marie Trotti, MD, David Rye, MD, PhD and colleagues from the Department of Neurology and Emory Sleep Center conducted the study, which involved 23 patients.

Advantages of clarithromycin:

  1. It’s inexpensive and widely available.
  2. It’s an option for people dealing with hypersomnia for whom other medications, such as modafinil, are not helpful or tolerable.
  3. It represents an alternative to flumazenil, the benzodiazepine antidote that has been shown to help some hypersomnia patients. Flumazenil used to be very scarce, and shortages occur (Hypersomnia Foundation/American Society of Health System Pharmacists).

Disadvantages of clarithromycin:

  1. It’s an antibiotic, so it probably changes intestinal bacteria.
  2. Chronic use could promote the growth of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
  3. Most patients reported an altered sense of taste or smell. Some describe this as a metallic mouth sensation.

Read more

Posted on June 26, 2015 by Quinn Eastman in Neuro Leave a comment
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