2016 December
Merry Microscopy and a Happy New Technique!
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
Seasons Greetings! What looks like a humble wreath actually represents an awe-inspiring gift to biomedical research: a new imaging technique that adds a dash of color to the formerly black-and-white world of electron microscopy (EM). Here the technique is used to visualize the uptake of cell-penetrating peptides (red) by the fluid-filled vesicles (green) of the endosome (gray), a cellular compartment involved in molecular transport. Without the use of color to draw sharp contrasts between the various structures, such details would not be readily visible.
This innovative technique has its origins in a wonderful holiday story. In December 2003, Roger Tsien, a world-renowned researcher at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), decided to give himself a special present. With the lab phones still and email traffic slow for the holidays, Tsien decided to take advantage of the peace and quiet to spend two weeks alone at the research bench, pursuing an intriguing, yet seemingly wacky, idea. He wanted to find a way to deposit ions of a rare earth metal, called lanthanum, directly into cells as the vital first step in creating a new imaging technique designed to infuse EM with some much-needed color. After the holidays, when the lab returned to its usual hustle and bustle, Tsien handed off his project to Stephen Adams, a research scientist in his lab, thereby setting in motion a nearly 13-year quest to perfect the colorful new mode of EM.
Snapshots of Life: Wired for Nerve Regeneration
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
Credit: Laura Struzyna, Cullen Laboratory, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
Getting nerve cells to grow in the lab can be a challenge. But when it works, the result can be a thing of beauty for both science and art. What you see growing in the Petri dish shown above are nerve cells from an embryonic rat. On the bottom left is a dorsal root ganglion (dark purple), which is a cluster of sensory nerve bodies normally found just outside the spinal cord. To the right are the nuclei (light purple) and axons (green) of motor neurons, which are the nerve cells involved in forming key signaling networks.
Laura Struzyna, a graduate student in the lab of NIH grantee D. Kacy Cullen at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, Philadelphia, is using laboratory-grown nerve cells in her efforts to learn how to bioengineer nerve grafts. The hope is this work will one day lead to grafts that can be used to treat people whose nerves have been damaged by car accidents or other traumatic injuries.
Study Finds No Safe Level of Smoking
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
Thinkstock\Nastco
Many Americans who’ve smoked cigarettes have been successful in their efforts to quit. But there’s some bad news for those who’ve settled for just cutting back: new evidence shows there’s no safe amount of smoking. One cigarette a day, or even less than that, still poses significant risks to your health.
A study conducted by NIH researchers of more than 290,000 adults between the ages of 59 and 82 found that those who reported smoking less than one cigarette per day, on average, for most of their lives were nine times more likely to die from lung cancer than those who never smoked. The outlook was even worse for those who smoked between one and 10 cigarettes a day. Compared to never-smokers, they faced a 12 times greater risk of dying from lung cancer and 1½ times greater risk of dying of cardiovascular disease.
Talking Music and Science with Yo-Yo Ma
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
It’s not every day that an amateur guitar picker gets to play a duet with an internationally renowned classical cellist. But that was my thrill this week as I joined Yo-Yo Ma in a creative interpretation of the traditional song, “How Can I Keep from Singing?” Our short jam session capped off Mr. Ma’s appearance as this year’s J. Edward Rall Cultural Lecture.
The event, which counts The Dalai Lama, Maya Angelou, and Atul Gawande among its distinguished alumni, this year took the form of a conversation on the intersection of music and science—and earned a standing ovation from a packed house of researchers, patients, and staff here on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) campus in Bethesda, MD.
Precision Oncology: Epigenetic Patterns Predict Glioblastoma Outcomes
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
Caption: Oncologists review a close-up image of a brain tumor (green dot).
Credit: National Cancer Institute
Scientists have spent much time and energy mapping the many DNA misspellings that can transform healthy cells into cancerous ones. But recently it has become increasingly clear that changes to the DNA sequence itself are not the only culprits. Cancer can also be driven by epigenetic changes to DNA—modifications to chemical marks on the genome don’t alter the sequence of the DNA molecule, but act to influence gene activity. A prime example of this can been seen in glioblastoma, a rare and deadly form of brain cancer that strikes about 12,000 Americans each year.
In fact, an NIH-funded research team recently published in Nature Communications the most complete portrait to date of the epigenetic patterns characteristic of the glioblastoma genome [1]. Among their findings were patterns associated with how long patients survived after the cancer was detected. While far more research is needed, the findings highlight the potential of epigenetic information to help doctors devise more precise ways of diagnosing, treating, and perhaps even preventing glioblastoma and many other forms of cancer.
Snapshots of Life: Virus Hunting with Carbon Nanotubes
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
Credit: Penn State University
The purple pods that you see in this scanning electron micrograph are the H5N2 avian flu virus, a costly threat to the poultry and egg industry and, in very rare instances, a health risk for humans. However, these particular pods are unlikely to infect anything because they are trapped in a gray mesh of carbon nanotubes. Made by linking carbon atoms into a cylindrical pattern, such nanotubes are about 10,000 times smaller than width of a human hair.
The nanotubes above have been carefully aligned on a special type of silicon chip called a carbon-nanotube size-tunable-enrichment-microdevice (CNT-STEM). As described recently in Science Advances, this ultrasensitive device is designed to capture viruses rapidly based on their size, not their molecular characteristics [1]. This unique feature enables researchers to detect completely unknown viruses, even when they are present in extremely low numbers. In proof-of-principle studies, CNT-STEM made it possible to collect and detect viruses in a sample at concentrations 100 times lower than with other methods, suggesting the device and its new approach will be helpful in the ongoing hunt for new and emerging viruses, including those that infect people.
