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

pig lung

Oink! — Glycan receptors for flu viruses

Pigs are natural hosts for influenza viruses that can infect humans, in particular the 2009 and, going way back, 1918 H1N1 flu strains. So to understand how influenza infections spread in the body, biochemists and virologists look at pigs.

Biochemistry chair Rick Cummings’ group has a paper in PNAS this week examining the carbohydrates or glycans on the surfaces of pig lung cells, using their “shotgun glycomics” library approach. MMG graduate student Lauren Byrd-Leotis is the first author.Piglung

“The results illustrate the repertoire of specific, endogenous N-glycans of pig lung glycoproteins for virus recognition and offer a new direction for studying endogenous glycan functions in viral pathogenesis,” the team reports.

Posted on by Quinn Eastman in Immunology Leave a comment