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

stress

Vulnerability to stress – Tet by Tet

Geneticist Peng Jin and colleagues have a paper in Cell Reports this week that is part of a mini-boom in studying the Tet enzymes and their role in the brain. The short way to explain what Tet enzymes do is that they remove DNA methylation by oxidizing it out.

Methylation, a modification of DNA that generally shuts genes off, has been well-studied for decades. The more recent discovery of how cells remove methylation with the Tet enzymes opened up a question of what roles the transition markers have. It’s part of the field of epigenetics: the meaning of these modifications “above” the DNA sequence.

This is my favorite analogy to explain the transition states, such as 5-hydroxymethylcytosine. They’re not really a new letter of the genetic alphabet – they’ve been there all along. We just didn’t see them before.

Imagine that you are an archeologist, studying an ancient civilization. The civilization’s alphabet contains a limited number of characters. However, an initial pass at recently unearthed texts was low-resolution, missing little doodads like the cedilla in French: Ç.

Are words with those marks pronounced differently? Do they have a different meaning?

The new Cell Reports paper shows that it matters what pen writes the little doodads. In mice, removing one Tet enzyme, Tet1, has the opposite effect from removing Tet2, when it comes to response to chronic stress. One perturbation (loss of Tet1) makes the mice more resistant to stress, while the other (loss of Tet2) has them more vulnerable. The researchers also picked up an interaction between Tet1 and HIF1-alpha, critical for regulation of cells’ response to hypoxia. Read more

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How metabolic syndrome interacts with stress – mouse model

Emory researchers recently published a paper in Brain, Behavior and Immunity on the interaction between psychological stress and diet-induced metabolic syndrome in a mouse model.

“The metabolic vulnerability and inflammation associated with conditions present in metabolic syndrome may share common risk factors with mood disorders. In particular, an increased inflammatory state is recognized to be one of the main mechanisms promoting depression,” writes lead author Betty Rodrigues, a postdoc in Malu Tansey’s lab in the Department of Physiology.

This model may be useful for identification of possible biomarkers and therapeutic targets to treat metabolic syndrome and mood disorders. As a follow-up, Tansey reports that her team is investigating the protective effects of an anti-inflammatory agent on both the brain and the liver using the same model.

Metabolic syndrome and stress have a complex interplay throughout the body, the researchers found. For example, psychological stress by itself does not affect insulin or cholesterol levels, but it does augment them when combined with a high-fat, high-fructose diet. In contrast, stress promotes adaptive anti-inflammatory markers in the hippocampus (part of the brain), but those changes are wiped out by a high-fat, high-fructose diet. If you want to get rid of stress, one way of doing it is by playing games such as slot gacor.

The findings show synergistic effects by diet and stress on gut permeability promoted by inflammation, and the biliverdin pathway. Biliverdin, a product of heme breakdown, is responsible for a greenish color sometimes seen in bruises.

“Stress and high-fat high-fructose diet promoted disturbances in biliverdin, a metabolite associated with insulin resistance,” Rodrigues writes. “To the best of our knowledge, our results reveal for the first time evidence for the synergistic effect of diet and chronic psychological stress affecting the biliverdin pathway.”

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Striking graph showing gene-stress interactions in PTSD

This graph, from a recent paper in Nature Neuroscience, describes how variations in the gene FKBP5 make individuals more susceptible to physical and sexual abuse, and thus more likely to develop PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder).nn.3275-F1

The paper is the result of a collaboration between Elisabeth Binder and her colleagues at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich, and Emory psychiatrists Kerry Ressler and Bekh Bradley. The population under study is made up of inner-city Atlanta residents, part of the Grady Trauma Project overseen by Ressler and Bradley. This paper analyzes samples from a group of individuals that is more than twice as large as the original 2008 paper defining the effect of FKBP5, and adds mechanistic understanding: how regulation of the FKBP5 gene is perturbed.

Back to the graph — in addition to the effects of the different forms of the gene, it is striking how high the rate of PTSD is for both individuals with the protective and risk forms of FKBP5. Also, for individuals who did not experience abuse, the PTSD rate is actually higher for the “protective” form of the gene. On this point, the authors write:

It is, however, possible that the described polymorphisms Gafas Ray Ban outlet define not only risk versus resilience, but possibly environmentally reactive versus less reactive individuals. This would imply that the so-called risk-allele carriers may also profit more from positive environmental change.

The FKBP5 gene encodes a protein that regulates responses to the stress hormone cortisol. Thus, it acts in blood and immune system cells, not only the brain, and is involved in terminating the stress response after the end of a threat. In the paper’s discussion, the authors propose that FKBP5 may have a role in sensitivity to other immune and metabolic diseases, in addition to PTSD and depression.

Max Planck press release on Binder paper

Recent post on Shannon Gourley’s related work (how stress hormone exposure leads to depression)

 

 

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Dissecting how chronic stress leads to depression

How can we study depression and antidepressants in animals? They can’t talk and tell us how they’re feeling. Previously, researchers have used the model of “behavioral despair,” with examples of the forced swimming test or the tail suspension test.

Shannon Gourley, PhD

Several psychiatrists have been arguing that a new framework is needed, which better simulates aspects of depression in humans, such as the variety of behavioral changes and the several week time period needed for antidepressants to function. This new framework could help illuminate how depression develops, and lead to new antidepressants that are effective for more people.

Shannon Gourley, who recently joined the Emory-Children’s Pediatric Research Center has been taking the approach of examining the lack of motivation and self-defeating behavior that are integral parts of depression.

The Pediatric Research Center is an effort led by Emory University and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, including partnerships with the Georgia Institute of Technology and Morehouse School of Medicine.

Note: Gretchen Neigh in psychiatry/physiology has been doing work with a similar theme, looking at the effects of adolescent social stress in animal models.

Gourley, neuroscience graduate student Andrew Swanson and their colleagues at Yale, where Gourley was a postdoc with Jane Taylor and Tony Koleske, have a new paper in PNAS on this topic. In particular, they dissect how chronic stress – or exposure to the stress hormone corticosterone – can produce loss of motivation and impaired decision making.

First, the researchers found that exposing rodents to cheap oakleys corticosterone shut off a growth factor called BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor) in the frontal cortex, a region of the brain important for planning and goal-directed behavior. BDNF nourishes neurons and helps keep them alive.

To confirm that BDNF was important in this region of the brain, researchers selectively silenced the gene for BDNF only in the frontal cortex. Both mice exposed to stress hormones and the BDNF-altered mice showed reduced motivation to earn food rewards. Mice would ordinarily press a lever dozens of times to get a food pellet, but the BDNF-altered animals would stop trying earlier – the “break point” is 2/3 as high.

“Depression is a leading cause of unemployment because people are unable to break out of self-defeating behavioral patterns and to muster the motivation to engage with the world. If we can better understand how to treat these symptoms, we can effect better outcomes for individuals suffering from depression,” Gourley says. “The BDNF deficiency alone could account for the loss of motivation that individuals with depression suffer.”

However, she reports her team was surprised that the loss of BDNF could not account for another aspect of depression: cyclical self-defeating behavior. They modeled this by asking whether mice continue to press a lever for a food reward even when the reward is no longer available.

“When we made the discovery that reduced BDNF could not account for all of the depression symptoms that we study, we took a step back and looked at the stress response system,” Gourley says.

Stress hormone exposure impairs the ability of mice to switch away from fruitless behaviors, but loss of BDNF in the frontal cortex does not. Here, the stress response system itself was the culprit. When her team temporarily blocked the ability of mice to shut off their stress response systems using the drug mifepristone, mice had impaired decision-making. However, their motivation to obtain rewards was not altered. When the drug wore off, they returned to normal.

Gourley says the implication is that effective antidepressants need to be able to attack not one, but two physiological systems: they need to increase levels of BDNF, and they need to help the stress system recover so that it can shut itself off better. A classic trycyclic antidepressant, amitriptyline, can do both and was effective in treating both the motivation and decision making parts of depression in animal models.

The use of tricyclic antidepressants is limited because of side effects and overdose potential. In addition, another challenge in treating depression is that current antidepressants only begin to work after several weeks or months of treatment. This is thought to be because it takes several weeks for these drugs—which act only indirectly on BDNF—to restore BDNF levels back to normal.

New compounds that act directly on BDNF’s receptor TrkB, such as those identified and tested by Emory researcher Keqiang Ye, could be promising in the development of new approaches to depression, Gourley says.

She and her team also showed that a drug called riluzole, which acts indirectly but rapidly on BDNF systems, has antidepressant effects in the animal models. Riluzole is currently in use to treat ALS, and reportedly has antidepressant effects in humans. Clinical trials with riluzole in the context of depression are underway.

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AHA meeting highlights — an Emory-centric view

Poring over the abundance of information presented at major scientific meetings is like trying to drink from a firehose.  Imposing an Emory-centric filter on this year’s American Heart Association Scientific Sessions meeting in Los Angeles, here are three highlights, with a shoutout to the AHA journal Circulation, which provides a database of meeting abstracts.

Alginate encapsulation, a therapeutic delivery tactic to get stem cells to stay in the heart

Presenter Rebecca Levit, MD, a postdoc in cardiology division chair W. Robert Taylor’s laboratory, was a finalist for an Early Career Investigator Award.

 Stem cell therapies for myocardial repair have shown promise in preclinical trials, but lower than expected retention and viability of transplanted cells. In an effort to improve this, we employed an alginate encapsulation strategy for human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) and attached them to the heart with a biocompatible PEG hydrogel patch in a rat MI model. Encapsulation allows for diffusion of pro-angiogenic cytokines and growth factors made by the hMSCs while maintaining them at the site of implantation…Alginate encapsulated hMSCs attached to the heart with a hydrogel patch resulted in a highly significant improvement in left ventricular function after acute myocardial infarction. The mechanism for this markedly enhanced effect appears to be increased cell survival and retention.

 Note: alginate already has a wide variety of uses, for example in culinary arts and to make dental impressions.

suPAR, a biomarker connected with depression, inflammation and cardiovascular outcomes. Step back, C-reactive protein

Depression, inflammation (Manocha, Vaccarino)

Cardiovascular outcomes (Eapen, Quyyumi)

Coronary microvascular dysfunction (Corban, Samady)

Predicting mental-stress myocardial ischemia via a public speaking test

A study probing myocardial ischemia (a lack of blood flow to the heart) induced by psychological stress, described in this Emory Public Health article. The presentation by Ronnie Ramadan examines physiological responses to a public speaking test as a way of predicting more severe problems.

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New Biological Pathway Identified for PTSD

Emory MedicalHorizon

High blood levels of a hormone produced in response to stress are linked to post-traumatic stress disorder in women but not men, a study from researchers at Emory University and the University of Vermont has found.

The results were published in the Feb. 24 issue of Nature.

The hormone, called PACAP (pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating polypeptide), is known to act throughout the body and the brain, modulating central nervous system activity, metabolism, blood pressure, pain sensitivity and immune function. The identification of PACAP as an indicator of PTSD may lead to new diagnostic tools and eventually, to new treatments for anxiety disorders.


Video on YouTube

“Few biological markers have been available for PTSD or for psychiatric diseases in general,” says first author Kerry Ressler, MD, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Emory University School of Medicine and a researcher at Yerkes National Primate Research Center. “These results give us a new window into the biology of PTSD.”

Read more @ emoryhealthsciences.org.

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Study: Regular aerobic exercise and prevention of drug abuse relapse

Exercise provides health benefits

Researchers at Emory University and the University of Georgia have received funding from the National Institutes of Health to study the neurobiological mechanisms for how regular aerobic exercise may prevent drug abuse relapse. The grant is for $1.9 million over the next five years.

David Weinshenker, PhD, associate professor of human genetics, Emory School of Medicine, is a co-principal investigator on the project.

David Weinshenker, PhD

“This research will provide new insight into how regular exercise may attenuate drug abuse in humans,” Weinshenker says. “More importantly, it may reveal a neural mechanism through which exercise may prevent the relapse into drug-seeking behavior.”

During the study, Weinshenker and UGA co-investigator Philip Holmes, professor of psychology in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, will measure exercise-induced increases of the galanin gene activity in the rat brain.

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Stress increases health risks to mother and fetus

At Emory’s fifth annual predictive health symposium Human Health: Molecules to Mankind,Emory GYN/OB Sarah L. Berga, MD, discussed the state of childbirth in the United States and how maternal stress affects pregnant women and their fetuses.

Berga is McCord professor and chair of the Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics at Emory School of Medicine. Sadly, Berga has seen maternal mortality rise steadily since the 1980s when she entered her medical residency. Georgia, she says, has the worse maternal mortality in the country. And the United States fares worse than many countries when it comes to maternal mortality.

Despite the unfortunate rise in maternal mortality of late, the good news is physicians have now started to pay more attention to the effect of stress ”both the physical and emotional kind” on women and their fetuses. Recent research shows stress has the same negative effect on the body as do organic diseases, such as thyroid disease. In fact, too much stress reduces thyroxine levels by about 50 percent, says Berga. But because there’s no clinical recognition of this, tests are needed to determine if thyroxine levels are indeed insufficient. The bottom line is, pregnant women should visit a gynecology clinic on a regular basis to ensure their and their babies’ safety.

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Cultivating compassion while lowering stress

Charles Raison, MD

Charles Raison, MD

Charles Raison, MD, and his colleagues are studying how stress and the immune system interact to make people depressed when they’re sick and sick when they’re depressed. Yet, data show that people who practice compassion meditation may reduce their inflammatory and behavioral responses to stress, which are linked to serious illnesses. Raison is clinical director of the Emory Mind-Body Program. He also is the mental health expert on CNN’s health website, CNN Health.com.

One type of meditation, called focused meditation, aims to refine and enhance attention and calm the mind by focusing on one object such as the breath. Compassion meditation, as its name suggests, is designed to cultivate compassion—that is, enhancing one’s ability to empathize with the anguish, distress, and suffering of others.

We’re interested in how the stress system and the immune system interact to make people depressed when they’re sick and sick when they’re depressed, says Raison. There’s a circle where stress activates inflammation and inflammation activates stress pathways, Raison explains.

Secular, compassion meditation is based on a thousand-year-old Tibetan Buddhist mind-training practice called “lojong.” Lojong uses a cognitive, analytic approach to challenge a person’s unexamined thoughts and emotions towards other people, with the long-term goal of developing altruistic emotions and behavior towards all people.

To hear Raison’s own words about compassion meditation, go to “Sound Science.”

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Manage stress to your advantage

Recently Charles Raison, MD, assistant professor, Emory Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, wrote a blog for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on stress. As clinical director of the Emory Mind-Body Program and director of the Behavioral Immunology Program, he has been studying stress.

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Raison says stress is everywhere today, both in our private and public lives, but also relentlessly in print, with discussion after discussion regarding what it is and what can be done to ease it.

He notes that you should think of stress like a sandwich. One trick for dealing with stress is to try to stay in the middle of the stress sandwich in the meat of life – the optimal challenge. The basic idea, he comments, is that you see what’s in front of you as a challenge, neither boring nor threatening, difficult enough to keep you fully engaged, easy enough for you to accomplish your goals.

You can read more by Raison by visiting the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Doctor Is In blog online.

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