U-M + Israel = Great Science

U-M/Israeli Universities Partnership
for Research advances genetic studies  

The LSI's U-M/Israeli Universities Partnership for Research has yielded tremendous results in a short time through powerful collaborations between U-M scientists and their colleagues at universities in Israel. The progress of those collaborations was recently reported in the U-M/Israeli Universities Partnership for Research 2011 report. 

Dr. Steve Gruber, from U-M's medical school, completed a genetic analysis of inherited susceptibility to colon cancer and with funding from the Partnership was able to work with colleagues at the CHS National Israeli Cancer Control in Haifa, Israel to gather and analyze genetic data from families in northern Israel.

That study has already led to additional insights about genetic susceptibility to colon and breast cancer. It also helped to launch an international consortium to do larger scale studies across many countries and populations.

LSI professor Noah Rosenberg and his lab teamed up with scientists from Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University to produce work that revealed that four Jewish populations, Ashkenazi, Moroccan, Tunisian, and Turkish, are genetically intermediate between European and Middle Eastern non-Jewish groups. The work was published in BMC Genetics.

Using the data from this work, Rosenberg worked with Sean Morrison, Director of the U-M Center for Stem Cell Biology, and stem cell scientist Jack Mosher, in the first study of its kind to identify the origins of the most commonly used stem cell lines in human embryonic stem cell research. Their findings showed that most stem cell lines were derived from European, Middle Eastern, including Jewish, ancestry. These findings were published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The Partnership is currently seeking funding for six additional projects , which focus on the following health challenges: drug-resistant bacteria, hearing impairment, nervous system disorders, infectious disease, cancer and neurodegenerative disease, and genetic and environmental disease.

Read the full 2011 U-M/Israeli Universities Partnership for Research Progress Report.  

Neurons are the building blocks of the brain. Our senses, thoughts, and memories all depend on properly developed neurons and the connections among them. A fundamental feature of all neurons is that they are "polarized" cells that contain two distinct compartments: dendrites and axons. Dendrites receive inputs from other neurons whereas axons send signals to yet other neurons or muscles.

Live-imaged dendrites and axons.

Despite the importance of the distinction between dendrites and axons, little is known about how these two cellular compartments are formed in animals during development.

In a recent study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, LSI faculty member Bing Ye and his team reported the first transcription factor that is dedicated for dendrite development but not axon development.

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That Original Spirit: In Praise of Rita Willis
LSI managing director Liz Barry remembers a special donor    

At 2 am her train pulled into the station on Depot Street and Rita Willis stepped out onto Michigan soil for the first time. It was completely dark but she refused offers of a taxi from the stationmaster and walked with her suitcase up the hill and across the diag to the Martha Cook Residence for Women. It was the fall of 1943 and Rita Willis had just arrived to begin her studies at Michigan.  

Rita Willis, 1945 Michiganesian, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan

It is hard to imagine how unsettling the World War II era must have been for a young college woman far from home. Yet, Rita told me, "I didn't pay much attention to my studies. I had just learned to pilot a plane and spent most of my days walking between campus and the airport (about five miles south of town) spending every minute I could flying."

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10th Annual LSI Symposium

 

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