Research Education News

Researchers have uncovered a protein they say controls how the body produces fat cells.

Called Thy1 it has a fundamental role in controlling whether a primitive cell decides to become a fat cell, the Daily Mail reports. Experts say it could be harnessed in obesity treatments.

We believe that weight gain is not necessarily just a result of eating more and exercising less, said lead author Richard Phipps of the University of Rochester. The Rochester team discovered that a protein, Thy1, has a fundamental role in controlling whether a primitive cell decides to become a fat cell, making Thy1 a possible therapeutic target, according to a study published online this month by the FASEB Journal.

University of Rochester researchers believe they're on track to solve the mystery of weight gain -- and it has nothing to do with indulging in holiday eggnog.

hey discovered that a protein, Thy1, has a fundamental role in controlling whether a primitive cell decides to become a fat cell, making Thy1 a possible therapeutic target, according to a study published online this month by the FASEB Journal.

The research brings a new, biological angle to a problem that's often viewed as behavioral, said lead author Richard P. Phipps, Ph.D. In fact, some diet pills consist of antidepressants or anti-addiction medications, and do not address what's happening at the molecular level to promote fat cell accumulation.

We were pleased to see Gloria Culver, Ph.D., a secondary faculty member in the Department of Biochemistry & Biophysics, mentioned in the Rochester Review Magazine in an article titled Going After Harmful Bacteria:

One challenge in killing off harmful bacteria is that many of them develop resistance to antibiotics. Now researchers are targeting the formation of the protein-making machinery, or ribosomes, in those cells as a possible way to stop the bacteria. Gloria Culver, Professor of Biology, has, for the first time, isolated the middle steps in the process that creates the ribosomes.

Published in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, Culver’s work—conducted with graduate student Neha Gupta—captures a piece of ribosomal RNA in one of the intermediate states of being pared down to fit with protein molecules.

Jennifer Stripay, NSC PH.D. Candidate

Congratulations to NGP student Jennifer Stripay from the Mark Noble Lab, who has won the Grand Prize at the recent Wilmot Cancer Institute's 19^th Annual Scientific Symposium.

Well done Jennifer!

Jonathan Macoskey (BME Class 2015) was the recipient of the 2014 Robert W. Young Award for Undergraduate Student Research in Acoustics from the Acoustical Society of America. The Robert W. Young Award will provide resources for Jonathan to complete his proposed research project focused on developing a high-frequency ultrasound technique to visualize and quantify material properties of engineered tissue constructs. Jonathan is an undergraduate research assistant working in Professor Diane Dalecki's biomedical ultrasound laboratory, and his project contributes to a joint collaboration between Professor Dalecki and Professor Denise Hocking lab (Pharmacology and Physiology) dedicated to developing new ultrasound technologies for tissue engineering.

Xin Li, Ph.D.

The Department of Biochemistry & Biophysics welcomes the arrival of Xin Li, Ph.D., who is a new Assistant Professor. Dr. Li studies the roles of PIWI-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) in the development of germ cells and to causes of infertility in humans and animals.

Dr. Li was previously a postdoctoral fellow with Philip Zamore at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Please feel free to visit his personal and lab websites and view his CV.

researchers at University of Rochester Medical Center have launched a five-year effort to develop such a map. The project, called the Human Lung Molecular Atlas Program, or LungMAP, includes researchers from several other institutions and is supported by more than $20 million from the National Institutes of Health, $6.1 million of which was awarded to URMC.

With a detailed map of human lung development, health care providers will be able to more readily identify children who may be at risk for lung problems. For example, physicians know that infants who are born prematurely are more likely to develop emphysema or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in adulthood or later in life.

But we don’t always know which ones, or how severe their complications will be, said Gloria Pryhuber, M.D., professor of Pediatrics and Environmental Medicine and the study’s lead researcher at URMC. So that’s what this is really all about — we need to know more about how the lung is formed and heals normally, in order to encourage pre-term infants to develop more normally, and to help adult lungs to heal from diseases like pneumonia and emphysema.

Douglas Portman will start his term as President of the Chapter January 1^st, 2015.
Thank you for everyone who participated in the first presidential elections.
Thank you Krystel for serving as the first President and for reviving the Chapter.

Ben Hayden, Ph.D.

Recent studies have indicated that the color red tends to increase human attraction toward others, feelings of jealousy, and reaction times. New research by Ben Hayden, assistant professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, shows that female monkeys also respond to the color red, suggesting that biology, rather than culture, may play a fundamental role in red responses.

Read more about Red Effects...

Douglas Portman, Ph.D.

Males can suppress their hunger in order to focus on finding a mate, a new scientific study of a species of worm has shown.

The study, conducted by Douglas Portman at the University of Rochester Medical Center, points to how subtle changes in the brain's circuitry dictate differences in behaviour between males and females.

A diverse team of immunologists, engineers and critical care clinicians at the University of Rochester Medical Center received $4 million from the National Institutes of Health to study sepsis, an over-the-top immune response to an infection that leads to organ failure and death in about one third of patients. Beyond administering antibiotics, fluids and other supportive measures, physicians have no specific treatment to stop the syndrome, which is the most expensive condition treated in U.S. hospitals, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

David Knill

David C. Knill, professor of brain and cognitive sciences, and associate director of the Center for Visual Science, passed away suddenly on October 6^th at the age of 53.

The University has more information in their newscenter.

The Department of Brain & Cognitive Sciences has created a memorial website. From this site, you can post tributes or stories about Dave and invite friends and colleagues to post their own contributions.

Drs. Sriram Krishnaswamy of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia & University of Pennsylvania, and Peter Lollar of Emory University recently wrote a fitting tribute to our friend and colleague, Dr. Philip Fay, who passed away June 25, 2014 after a long battle with cancer. The two are researchers working in the same field as did Dr. Fay and published the tribute in Thrombosis and Haemostasis, a leading journal in the field. You can read the tribute here.

Diane Dalecki, Ph.D. (BME) and Denise C. Hocking, Ph.D. (Pharmacology & Physiology) have received a $2 million grant from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) for their project titled Ultrasound standing wave fields for vascular engineering. The goal of this 4-year project is to advance a novel ultrasound technology to fabricate complex, functional microvascular networks within three-dimensional engineered constructs.

Collaborators on this project are Maria Helguera, Ph.D. (Imaging Sciences, RIT), Ingrid Sarelius, Ph.D. (Pharmacology & Physiology) and Angela Glading, Ph.D. (Pharmacology & Physiology).

New, versatile vascularization strategies are needed to produce small-scale 3D tissue models and are critical for the fabrication of large-scale engineered tissues. The noninvasive capacity of ultrasound also enables innovative capabilities for fabricating microvessel networks within hydrogels injected within tissues. The successful completion of this project will provide new tools for tissue engineering and for a variety of clinical reconstructive and vascular surgery applications.

Preparing graduate students and post-doctoral trainees for jobs outside of academia is the goal of a new career-training program at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry (SMD), supported by $1.8 million from the National Institutes of Health.

The award to Principal Investigator Stephen Dewhurst Ph.D.,Vice Dean for Research at the SMD, comes at a time when fewer opportunities for tenure-track faculty positions exist, and yet graduate students in biomedical sciences don’t always have the awareness, robust training, connections, or transferable skills needed to identify and succeed in a range of other careers.

Steven Baker won Best Poster Presentation Award for young scientists at the Fifth ESWI Influenza Conference in Riga, Latvia. Steven also received this year's Melville A. Hare Award for excellence in Graduate Research along with Julie Sahler.

Daniel Martinelli received this year's Melville A. Hare Award for excellence in Teaching.

Shannon Loelius was the recipient of J. Newell Stannard Graduate Student Scholarship Award presented to her at the School of Medicine and Dentistry Convocation.

A new report examines potential health-related issues facing communities in areas of the country suitable for natural gas extraction. The hope is that the study, which was coauthored by Katrina Korfmacher, director of the University's Environmental Health Sciences Center’s Community Outreach and Engagement Core, will shape future research around communities’ health questions and inform their decision-making.