The 11th Annual LSI Symposium is May 24 in Ann Arbor
Click poster for details 
LSI Mission
To improve human health through collaborative
scientific discovery. |
|
See something here
that you'd like to pass along to a friend?
Click 'forward e-mail'
at the bottom of the newsletter.
|
|
|
LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR
A cutting-edge community
by Alan Saltiel
 | "The quest for understanding the very essential mechanisms of life-the passion at the heart of our work-continues to drive our communities."
-Alan Saltiel |
Mary Sue Coleman Director of the Life Sciences Institute
Before there was a brick-and-mortar Life Sciences Institute, there was the Life Sciences Symposium. In 2002, while construction was still underway, we held our first symposium, on the structural biology of cell signaling. Leading experts from institutions around the world working in what was then an emerging area of cross-disciplinary research spanning cell biology, physics and chemistry converged on U-M's Ann Arbor campus to engage in conversation and exchange perspectives.
The event continues to represent the LSI's most important values: excellence in science, investment in high-risk and high-impact research, and especially the synergy that happens when top scientists from a range of fields meet and share their work around a common theme.
This month we will be hosting the 11th Annual LSI Symposium, and will be hearing from some of the leading researchers in the world about their work on the nervous system. These are people who would not normally speak at the same conference, and that's the point.
Read more about how collaborative communities catalyze discovery
|
Q&A: Susan Lindquist of the Whitehead Institute
The complexity of neurodegenerative disease
 | Dr. Lindquist
|
Dr. Susan Lindquist is a member and former director of the Whitehead Institute, which she guided as the Whitehead Genome Center was transformed into the neighboring Broad Institute. A winner of the 2009 National Medal of Science, Lindquist is a pioneer in the study of a cellular process known as protein folding. In order for cellular proteins to function, they have to assemble or fold into a particular shape, a process that has profound and unexpected effects on normal biology and disease. When this process fails, proteins are said to "misfold." Protein misfolding is linked to several neurodegenerative disorders including Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and prion diseases such as "mad cow." Lindquist received her PhD in biology from Harvard University and was a postdoctoral fellow of the American Cancer Society. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine. Her honors also include the Dickson Prize in Medicine, Otto-Warburg Prize, Genetics Society of America Medal, FASEB Excellence in Science Award and, most recently, the Max Delbrück and Mendel Medals. She is also a member of the Board of Directors of Johnson & Johnson, and a co-founder of FoldRx, a biotech company (recently acquired by Pfizer) that develops drug therapies for diseases of protein misfolding and amyloidosis. Lindquist's latest research has shed new light on our understanding of this process and the underlying mechanisms of these diseases. We spoke with her in a phone conversation about her work. Why are neurodegenerative diseases so hard to treat? They are very, very complicated diseases. They're caused by proteins misbehaving. But different proteins misbehave in different ways. And a lot of other pathways impinge on the disease process. We've only uncovered a few genetic mutations so far that are linked to disease, but in fact these diseases involve a lot of different things going wrong. We work with yeast, which are really very sophisticated eukaryotic cells. This means that they aren't as simple as bacteria. They have a complex cellular organization, like we do. So if there's anything going wrong in fundamental cell biology that's caused by these particular proteins misfolding, we are able to see it in yeast. There's a misconception that you have to work on neurons in people, but all cells are related. Many scientists forget that evolutionary processes have such far-reaching effects. We all share so much. If you only study neurodegenerative diseases in a mouse, it still takes a long time. But, it may turn out that the reason for the disease is that a very fundamental process goes wrong in all the cells of an organism, and neurons are just the first to be affected. Then we'll be able to find that process in yeast.
Dr. Lindquist will deliver the Mary Sue and Kenneth Coleman Life Sciences Lecture at the 11th Annual LSI Symposium on May 24 at 9:10 a.m. in the Kahn Auditorium in the Biomedical Science Research Building on U-M's Ann Arbor campus. Her talk is titled "Can Simple Cells Help Solve Complex Neurodegenerative Diseases?" and is open to the public.
|
Research Roundup
 | |
Diagrammatic section of the brain by René Descartes, 1664
|
Solving the cellular mysteries of neurodegeneration
About a quarter of the faculty at LSI works on research related to the nervous system. In particular, neurodegenerative diseases are an area of intense interest, as scientists try to understand what causes the diseases, how they progress, and what might prevent or slow them down.
Here is a sample of publications related to neurodegeneration published so far this year.
Quality-control mechanism malfunction could lead to accumulation of damaged proteins
 | | Dr. Gestwicki |
In a paper published in April, Jason Gestwicki examined the mechanism by which cells sense and remove damaged proteins. (The accumulation of misfolded proteins is a common feature of many neurodegenerative diseases.) Key studies have suggested that quality control deteriorates with age. Gestwicki and his collaborators presented the evidence linking neurodegeneration to quality control and speculated on why proper quality control is so difficult for certain proteins. Read "Protein quality control in neurodegenerative disease," published in Progress in Molecular Biology and Translational Science Autophagy dysfunction and Parkinson's disease
Part of the reason protein builds up in the brain could be a dysfunction in the process of autophagy. Dan
 | |
Dr. Klionsky
|
Klionsky is the leading researcher of autophagy, the process by which cells remove and recycle waste; problems in the process have been linked to a number of diseases, including neurodenegerative. Researchers have found evidence of dysregulated autophagy pathway in brains of patients and animal models with Parkinson's disease. In a review published in Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Medicine in April, Klionsky examined the connection between autophagy in Parkinson's. Read "The Role of Autophagy in Parkinson's Disease," published in Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Medicine Metals in the brain and neurodegeneration
Highly concentrated metals such as copper, zinc and iron are found in some plaques in the brains of patients and animal models with Alzheimer's disease. In vitro and in vivo studies have suggested that the way these metals bind to plaques contributes to neurodegeneration, but the connection between the disease and the metalloids is not clear. Mi Hee Lim examines the relationship between the metals and the plaques associated with neurodegeneration, a relationship about which very little is known. A review co-written by Lim in Feb. 2012 explores the relationship between metals and neurotoxicity and examines potential molecules that might be used in illuminating the relationship further and identifying targets for drugs that might slow the progression of neurodegeneration. Read "Metal-associated amyloid-β species in Alzheimer's disease," published in Current Opinion in Chemical Biology |
INSTRUMENTATION
Reading minds
Neural imaging constantly evolves, but is always key to understanding the brain and nervous system
In the late 19th and early 20th century, a scientist working in Madrid named Santiago Ramón y Cajal used a technique called Golgi staining (discovered by Camille Golgi, the Italian physician and scientist) to see entire neurons for the first time. Cajal is widely considered "the father of neuroscience," and he, with Golgi, received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1906.
In neuroscience today, imaging technology remains crucial to
understanding the nervous system. At the LSI, scientists like
Bing Ye create three-dimensional images of neurons and their axon/dendrite systems that enable them to view the cell from all angles-and understand just a little bit more about how the body senses and responds to the world around it.
Here are some examples of how neural imaging has changed:
 | | Camillo Golgi's drawing of a hippocampus, 1873 |
 | | Santiago Ramón y Cajal's drawing of neurons in the cerebellum of a chick, 1905 |
 | Bing Ye's image of a single neuron in the peripheral nervous system of Drosophila larva, 2007
|
|
Recognition and awards for work in the LSI on the nervous system Faculty Accolades  | | Dr. Lim |
Lim awarded prestigious Sloan Fellowship for work on neurodegeneration Mi Hee Lim examines the relationship between the metals and neurodegeneration (see research roundup, above). She was awarded the prestigious Sloan Research Fellowship in February 2012. U-M News Service press release Student Spotlight Piggott receives Weintraub Graduate Student Award for work on neural circuits  | | Beverly Piggott |
Beverly Piggott, LSI graduate student, received the highly competitive Harold M. Weintraub Graduate Student Award. Working in the lab of LSI faculty member Shawn Xu, Piggott studies the neural circuits that control behavior in C. elegans. |
On the scientific horizon, forming partnerships between U-M and universities in Israel
They shared passions for three things: the State of Israel, the University of Michigan and cutting-edge medical science. A group of about 30 supporters of the UM/Israel Partnership for Research gathered in the Miami home of Detroit businessman, philanthropist and U-M alumnus Joel Tauber on March 20 to discuss ways in which they could further combine these passions--and have a significant impact on the international world of research and health care.
The UM/Israel Partnership for Research is an initiative that creates important new scientific opportunities and interactions by supporting boundary-crossing, interdisciplinary collaborations between scientists from the LSI and from U-M's Cardiovascular Center (CVC) with researchers at Israeli institutions.
"We're very excited about the partnership between U-M and institutions in Israel," said David Pinsky, scientific director of the CVC and division chief of Cardiovascular Medicine at U-M. "I've had the honor of personally working with Israeli scientists, and know that they are some of the best in the world. Together we can really make a difference."
More about the event and on the U-M/Israeli Partnership for Research
|
|
