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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How Zika infects the placenta

Zika virus can infect and replicate in immune cells from the placenta, without killing them, scientists have discovered. The finding may explain how the virus can pass through the placenta of a pregnant woman, on its way to infect developing brain cells in her fetus.

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Infected placental macrophages. Zika antigens visible in red. From Quicke et al (2016).

The results were published in Cell Host & Microbe.

“Our results substantiate the limited evidence from pathology case reports,” says senior author Mehul Suthar, PhD, assistant professor of pediatrics at Emory University School of Medicine. “It was known that the virus was getting into the placenta. But little was known about where the virus was replicating and in what cell type.”

Scientists led by Suthar and Emory pediatric infectious disease specialist Rana Chakraborty, MD, found that Zika virus could infect placental macrophages, called Hofbauer cells, in cell culture. The virus could also infect another type of placental cell, called cytotrophoblasts, but only after a couple days delay and not as readily. Other researchers recently reported that syncytiotrophoblasts, a more differentiated type of placental cell than cytotrophoblasts, are resistant to Zika infection.

The cells for the experiments were derived from full-term placentae, obtained from healthy volunteers who delivered by Cesarean section. The level of viral replication varied markedly from donor to donor, which hints that some women’s placentae may be more susceptible to viral infection than others. Read more

Posted on by Quinn Eastman in Immunology Leave a comment