tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11760384511649510772024-02-20T13:06:26.211-08:00GTBioBabblejerry grillohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04709583838863623577noreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1176038451164951077.post-38115803587457994472016-12-19T06:33:00.000-08:002016-12-19T06:33:05.232-08:00Fighting the Good, Long Fight<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #262626; font-family: Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0.025em; line-height: 1.6; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">
The war on cancer is 45 years old. And while there have been some significant advances since passage of the National Cancer Act in 1971, the conflict has spread out along many fronts.</div>
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With the realization now that there are more than 200 types and subtypes of cancer, the battle plan has evolved from a one-size-fits-all strategy to a data-driven, more personalized approach, which means the army of researchers and clinicians devoted to fighting cancer also has evolved.</div>
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“We’re seeing the emergence of the new cancer biology,” says John McDonald, director of the Integrated Cancer Research Center (ICRC) at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “It’s actually being driven now by technologies and expertise that lie outside the traditional framework of cancer biology. That’s why I think you’re probably going to see major breakthroughs in cancer research coming out of places like Georgia Tech and M.I.T., as opposed to traditional medical schools.”</div>
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Advances in genomics and high throughput sequencing have generated massive amounts of data, “and it’s opened up the field to people that were not trained as cancer biologists, but have the necessary skillsets for the analysis of all this new, big data,” says McDonald, a faculty researcher with the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience and professor in the School of Biological Sciences, who has definitely seen his share of breakthroughs in his own <a href="http://www.mcdonaldlab.biology.gatech.edu/news.htm" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #1a0dab; text-decoration: none;">recent research</a> focused on ovarian cancer.</div>
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The cancer biology that McDonald knew when he was a college student has moved from an era of specialization into an era of multidisciplinary research, in which researchers from a wide range of areas now work together on common projects.</div>
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“Twenty five years ago, these people probably wouldn’t have spoken to each other because they didn’t have any common interests,” says McDonald. “I was like a kid in a candy store when we first came to Georgia Tech, and it still feels like that – the idea of being in a place where all of this expertise and creativity exist. Cancer research is not a one-person endeavor. It’s all about collaboration.”</div>
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And McDonald has plenty of collaborators within and beyond the ICRC, which occupies a busy space where molecular biology, computational science, engineering and nanotechnology converge. Together, these scientists and engineers are developing next generation cancer diagnostics and therapeutics.</div>
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<strong style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">Family Affair</strong></div>
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Fatih Sarioglu trained as an electrical engineer in his native Turkey and later at Stanford University, developing particular expertise in microsystems and nanosystems, developing sensitive, small-scale devices to look at atoms. After earning his Ph.D., he says, “I wondered how I could use these skills to benefit humanity.”</div>
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Sarioglu, assistant professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and a Petit Institute faculty researcher, he spent three years as a post-doc at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, learning about cancer. He found his opportunity, “to give biologists and biomedical scientists and clinicians capabilities they don’t have.”</div>
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There was a personal reason for Sarioglu’s interest in cancer, as well. The disease took the life of two grandparents. But he was particularly motivated when his mother-in-law was diagnosed, back in Turkey, with late-stage brain cancer.</div>
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“It was devastating. I knew life expectancy was about four or five months,” says Sarioglu. “But their diagnosis was based purely on the pathology, a biopsy slice.”</div>
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He asked a colleague at Mass General, David Lewis, one of the world’s top pathologists, for another opinion. Lewis’ conclusions were vastly different. The cancer was benign, operable, and Sagioglu’s mother-in-law is alive and well.</div>
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“It showed me that we still have to improve how we diagnose cancer,” says Sarioglu, whose lab develops microfluidic chips that can isolate tumor cells out of billions of other cells. At Mass General, he worked on a device that captures clumps of tumor cells before metastasis, preventing the spread of cancer.</div>
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He’s continued that work since arriving at Georgia Tech in 2014, developing microchip technology that analyzes cells accurately and at very high speeds. Essentially, it is a better way to find the needle in the haystack, a minimally invasive way to diagnose cancer, liquid biopsy.</div>
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“The possibilities are endless, really,” says Sarioglu, who counts McDonald and Fred Vannberg (an expert in DNA sequencing who specializes in the molecular analysis of cancer) among his research collaborators. “The technology is applicable to all types of cancer.”</div>
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<strong style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">Doing Better</strong></div>
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The primary tumor is rarely the killer in cancer. Nine times out of 10, cancer kills because it spreads to other parts of the body. So when a patient gets a cancer diagnosis, one of his first questions is, “has it metastasized?”</div>
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“You can obviously appreciate the anxiety. The physician and patient wonder the same exact thing. That’s the first question,” says Stanislav Emelianov, professor in the Georgia Tech/Emory Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME), a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar and the Joseph M. Pettit Chair in School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.</div>
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“Then there are more questions. What is the prognosis, the treatment, how do I deal with this – a lot of questions that can be better answered if we know the answer to the first question,” says Emelianov, whose team designs ultrasound imaging devices and algorithms, and has embarked on a project supported by a grant from the Breast Cancer Research Foundation to use light and sound and a non-radioactive molecularly targeted contrast agent, to answer that anxious first question.</div>
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The traditional approach has been to inject radioactive material and tracking that, then biopsy, which involves incision of the skin to expose the lymph node and taking pieces out to look for cancer.</div>
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“It is accurate, but it is also invasive, complicated and uses radioactive material,” Emelianov says. “We can do better.”</div>
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Emelianov speculates that in the future, we may be able to “weaponize” these contrast agents to actually kill cancer cells. Meanwhile, his team also is using its advanced imaging technology in collaboration with colleagues at Emory University’s Winship Cancer Center, to diagnose thyroid cancer and differentiate between malignant and benign tumors.</div>
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<strong style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">Tech’s Cancer Army</strong></div>
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There are more than 40 faculty researchers at Georgia Tech who are members of the ICRC. They come from 12 different departments or schools. And there are an additional 16 researchers from academic and medical institutions that are affiliate members. It’s a diverse intellectual force that is giving Georgia Tech its own identity in cancer research.</div>
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“We can be a major player in cancer,” says McDonald. “How many medical schools have this breadth of expertise?”</div>
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He’s talking about young researchers like Susan Thomas, awarded Georgia Tech’s first grant from Susan G. Komen (breast cancer research foundation), supporting her work in immunotherapy for breast cancer; and Manu Platt, whose lab developed a new technique to give patients and oncologists more personalized information for choosing breast cancer treatment options.</div>
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And he’s referring to computer scientists like Constantine Dovrolis, who has spent the last few years investigating a phenomenon called “the hourglass effect” that is present in both technological and natural systems. He’s adapting what he learned studying embryogenesis with Georgia Tech biologist (and Petit Institute researcher) Soojin Yi to his collaboration with McDonald in cancer research.</div>
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He’s also thinking of BME-based researchers James Dahlman and William Lam.</div>
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Dahlman, an assistant professor who came to Georgia Tech earlier this year, works on cancer in two ways. Focusing extensively on primary lung tumors as well as lung metastasis, his team works on delivering genetic drugs to tumors.</div>
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“We have changed their gene expression, and either slowed tumor growth or caused established tumors to recede,” says Dahlman, an expert in gene editing. “In some cases, we have delivered multiple therapeutic RNAs to tumors, so that tumor cells are hit with a genetic ‘one-two’ punch that affects multiple cancer causing genes.”</div>
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His lab also creates tools to understand how cancer genes cause tumor resistance, studying how combinations of genes influence tumor growth, “because cancer is such a complicated disease and the genetics of cancer are notoriously difficult to understand,” Dahlman says. “It’s driven by many genes working together at once.”</div>
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For Lam, the war on cancer is waged in a lab and on the front lines, in a clinical setting. In addition to being a biomedical engineer, he’s also a pediatric hematologist-oncologist who treats patients at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.</div>
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His Ph.D. was actually focused on the biophysics of childhood leukemia, and his research in this area has focused on a small percentage of patients who develop leukostasis (stroke-like symptoms and lung failure).</div>
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“We always thought it was due to the biophysical properties of leukemia cells, which become big and sticky and jam up the plumbing of our blood vessels in our brain and lungs, which happen to have the smallest blood vessels,” says Lam, who is collaborating with Todd Sulchek, associate professor in mechanical engineering and a Petit Institute researcher.</div>
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“We’re combining some of Todd’s microfluidic technologies and our microfluidic technologies, to develop more high throughput ways to address this issue,” says Lam.</div>
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He’s also collaborating with the lab of BME professor Krish Roy on developing a ‘lymphoma on the chip’ model, to study how new cell therapies can directly affect the killing of cancer cells, as a way to determine whether those therapies have what it takes to work in the patient.</div>
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It’s all part of the multidisciplinary, “basement to bench to bedside” approach that Lam’s lab, with its connections to Georgia Tech, Emory University and Children’s Healthcare, has become known for.</div>
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“Within our lab, we’re certainly interested in technology development,” Lam says. “But then, we’re also interested in the assessment of the technology and, ultimately, directly translating that to the patient. Our lab lives in that entire space.”</div>
jerry grillohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04709583838863623577noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1176038451164951077.post-60367572372947480952015-03-20T23:25:00.001-07:002015-03-20T23:25:12.670-07:00Energy <div class="_5pbx userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}">
<br />
Energy is everywhere, all the time, impacting everything that everyone
does. The forms it takes may change constantly, but there is just as much or just as little energy in our closed system universe today as there ever was.<br />
<br />
Without energy, there is no life or death. Without energy, you are
intangible, insubstantial, non-existent, and for a species like ours
existence is typically preferable to the alternative, but in a certain
sense, our existence is also unavoidable, because of energy.<br />
<br />
We tame it
and domesticate it, help energy change form, not unlike the first posturally challenged hominid
that shambled back to his ancient campsite clutching a flaming branch,
probably lit from a pile of sun-fired underbrush, or maybe lava from a
volcanic eruption.<br />
<br />
The branch has evolved and we've monetized manifest energy,
but ultimately we can’t really control it because we depend on it more
than it depends on us. So we might as well learn to get along with it.<br />
</div>
jerry grillohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04709583838863623577noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1176038451164951077.post-66181323556104836792015-01-28T18:59:00.004-08:002015-01-29T18:49:06.003-08:00Military/veterans healthcare experts front and center at Georgia Tech<style>
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<span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-themecolor: text1;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-themecolor: text1;"><i>I did not want to write this story, because I feel ill-equipped to write about war and its effects, even in the cold abstract. I've never covered a war as a correspondent, never been to war, haven't lost a family member or close friend in a war. But when I read casualty numbers and statistics it sometimes makes my stomach turn, because those figures represent flesh and blood and souls, people. I am ill equipped. But I do appreciate the people who take on the terrible burden of fighting a war, and I appreciate the work of the people putting this symposium together -- people I get to work with -- brilliant scientists whose research is improving the lives of service members and veterans who have been injured. So, here's the little story. </i></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-themecolor: text1;">Some things about combat don’t change.
Soldiers put themselves in harm’s way for love of country. It’s part of the job
description. On the other hand, some things do change, in substantial ways. For
one thing, soldiers are surviving combat injuries in greater numbers than ever
before.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-themecolor: text1;">According to the Philanthropy Roundtable
publication, Serving Those Who Served, the U.S. Armed Forces’
wounded-to-fatality ratio has gone from 2:1 in World War II and 3:1 in the
Vietnam War to 8:1 in the Iraq/Afghanistan war. The odds for a soldier’s
survival have improved thanks largely to advances in emergency and in-theater
medicine. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-themecolor: text1;">The inevitable result is that a large number
of service members and veterans are living with debilitating injuries and
disabilities. It’s a reality that emphasizes the importance of the research in
regenerative medicine being done at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and
makes this week’s Military and Veterans Healthcare Technologies Symposium
particularly timely.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-themecolor: text1;">The symposium, sponsored by two Petit
Institute research centers, the Center for Advanced Bioengineering for Soldier
Survivability and the Regenerative Engineering and Medicine Center (REM), will
provide an opportunity for investigators to see what their colleagues are doing
in this broad area of military medicine. The plan is to bring together experts
from Georgia Tech, Emory, and the University of Georgia, this Thursday, January
30<sup>th</sup> (8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.) in the Suddath Room (1128) at the Parker
H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-themecolor: text1;">Research in technologies from combat casualty
care to veteran rehabilitation will be highlighted. So the focus will be on the
kind of regenerative medicine that can restore functionality to injured limbs
and tissues, and improve a soldier’s quality of life following a neuro and/or
neuromuscular injury on the battlefield. Tech’s research strengths in this area
lie in the treatment of osteoarthritis, musculoskeletal injuries, fibrosis or
scarring, and traumatic brain injury (TBI) and motor control.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-themecolor: text1;">Closer to the battlefield are advances in
hemotosis and bleeding detection, and infection and inflammation control, where
Tech’s strengths lie in technologies that induce or enhance clot and scar
formation, imaging, immunomodulation, and the treatment of wounds and
infections, broadly speaking.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-themecolor: text1;">Bringing all of this research to light is an
eclectic gathering of engineers and scientists, experts in their fields,
including the symposium faculty advisor, Thomas Barker, and REM co-director,
Johnna Temenoff, both from Georgia Tech. Also speaking with be: </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Andrés
J. García, Robert Guldberg, Robert Kistenberg, Will LaPlaca, Krishnendu Roy and
Lena Ting from Georgia Tech; Wilbur Lam, from Emory and Georgia Tech; Robert
Taylor, from Emory; Nick Willett, from Emory and the Atlanta Veterans
Administration; Steve Stice, from the University of Georgia; and Brian Pfister,
who is with the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-themecolor: text1;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“We
hope to get a feel for current Department of Defense priorities, initiatives
and interests as well,” says symposium program manager Martha Willis, who also
sees the event as an opportunity to build community, explore new research
synergies, and begin developing multi-investigator grant applications.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-themecolor: text1;">“In addition to the presentations on the
agenda, there is time for networking and discussions,” she says. “The hope is
that new research collaborations will result, old ones will be reinforced, and
investigators will have a chance to discuss future opportunities for funding
their work.”</span></div>
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jerry grillohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04709583838863623577noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1176038451164951077.post-65784926561543380412014-11-18T04:55:00.001-08:002014-11-18T04:55:27.297-08:00Molecular Artistry: Irving Geis shed light on an unseen world<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden">
<div class="field-items">
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The
atrium of the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and
Bioscience was swarmed by hundreds of guests on Saturday, October 18,
for the BUZZ on Biotechnology, an annual outreach event geared toward
teenaged students, an interactive open house to inspire future
scientists, and maybe generate a little interest in attending the
Georgia Institute of Technology.<br />
<br />
The kids took part in a bunch of hands-on experiments, many of which
are designed to teach something about biology at the molecular level.
They went from demonstration table to demonstration table, building
edible cells out of candy or extracting DNA from peas, unaware that all
around them, hanging on the atrium walls, are some of the most
influential images ever made of molecular biology. This is the art of
Irving Geis, whose 116th birthday also happened to be October 18, a
former Georgia Tech student who did more for myoglobin’s street cred
than anyone before him.<br />
<br />
Geis, who died in 1997, was a pioneer whose seminal, oft-reproduced painting of a sperm whale myoglobin molecule for <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/"><em>Scientific American</em></a>
in 1961 basically launched the field of molecular illustration, an
artist whose complex and colorful depictions of an unseen living world
have helped inspire and enlighten generations of students and
scientists.<br />
<br />
“We all knew about Irving Geis,” says Sheldon May, a biochemistry
professor who helped start the Petit Institute and led the effort to
bring Geis’s work to the atrium shortly after the building opened 15
years ago. “Anyone who taught biochemistry used his illustrations. He
was an amazing artist, strongly influenced by Da Vinci, and he did it
all in a time before computer graphics.”<br />
<br />
Geis, born in New York City in 1908, moved to Anderson, South
Carolina, as a kid. He thought he wanted to be an architect, so he
attended Georgia Tech from 1925 to 1927 with that in mind. He didn’t
graduate from Tech, but his experience in Atlanta obviously left an
impression, according to his daughter.<br />
<br />
“My father couldn’t carry a tune and almost never sang, but he taught me the song, <em>I’m a Ramblin’ Wreck from Georgia Tech</em>,
when I was six years old,” says Sandy Geis. “It was my favorite thing
to sing. Can you imagine? A six-year-old kid singing, ‘a hell of an
engineer’ at the top of her lungs.”<br />
<br />
Geis may have enjoyed his time at Tech, but he just wasn’t bound to
be an architect, and went on to earn a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the
University of Pennsylvania (1929) and after earning a degree in design
and painting from the University of South Carolina in 1933 he moved back
to New York to work as a freelance illustrator. He did a lot of work
for <em>Fortune</em> magazine, including a drawing of the circulatory
system that marked his venture into scientific illustration. “He was
very proud of that. It really jumpstarted his interest in biology,”
Sandy Geis says.<br />
<br />
During World War II, Geis worked as chief of the graphics section of
the Office of Strategic Services (OSS, the predecessor of the CIA) and
later as art director for the Office of War Information. Following the
war and for the rest of his life he worked as a freelance artist, and
from 1948 on he shaped the genre of scientific illustration. That was
the year he started contributing to <em>Scientific American</em>, where he produced some of the most iconic images of scientific illustration, the most famous in 1961.<br />
<br />
“The myoglobin painting was a landmark in his career, and in science.
It was really the first illustration of the molecular world,” says
Sandy Geis, whose father typically spent a few weeks on a project –
learning the subject, talking with the scientist writing the article he
was dressing up, and producing an illustration. But the myoglobin
watercolor painting took six months, because it takes a while to break
new ground.<br />
<br />
“There was always a back and forth dialogue with the authors, the
scientists,” Sandy Geis says. “Between his photographs, and sketches,
and the constant dialogue, he was able to elucidate whatever they said.
It was a complicated process, and my father was such a perfectionist.”<br />
<br />
The myoglobin illustration accompanied the article by British
biochemist John Kendrew, who described the structure of myoglobin, a
protein found in muscle tissue, and recruited Geis to convert his
physical models of myoglobin into a painting. It became the first
molecule that most people ever actually saw.<br />
<br />
“He was the preeminent molecular illustrator,” says May. “He used art
to beautifully demonstrate the structure and function of molecules.”<br />
<br />
The myoglobin painting increased demand in Geis’s talents. From 1963
until his death he illustrated a number of major books on biochemistry
and molecular biology, including three that he co-authored with Richard
Dickerson, the UCLA biochemistry professor, who had worked with Kendrew
on solving the first high-resolution x-ray crystal structure of
myoglobin in 1958.<br />
<br />
“It was never clear whether Irv illustrated my books, or I wrote Irv’s captions,” Dickerson wrote in the journal <em>Protein Science</em> in 1997, following Geis’s death. “In the end, it didn’t matter; together we could do more than either could have done alone.”<br />
<br />
According to Dickerson, his co-author’s genius wasn’t in depicting a
protein exactly how it looked, but drawing it in a such a way that
showed how the molecule worked, an artistic process that Geis called,
‘selective lying.’ Geis, wrote Dickerson, “was very taken with the
importance of using art to put across scientific concepts.”<br />
<br />
Geis also illustrated several editions of the <em>Biochemistry</em>, a nearly ubiquitous textbook that Georgia Tech scientists like May and Loren Williams are very familiar with.<br />
<br />
“I’d loved his work for years, but at first, I didn’t know he went to
Georgia Tech, until I found a copy of his obituary,” says Williams, a
biochemist who discussed with May the idea of bringing Geis’s work to
the Petit Institute building, which opened in 1999.<br />
<br />
May reached out to Sandy Geis, “called her out of the blue,” he says.
Around the same time, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute was working
on acquiring the Geis archives, but May called first, “and one thing led
to another. She was very happy that we were doing something to
perpetuate her father’s contribution to science.”<br />
<br />
Sandy Geis happily donated the illustrations that hang on the atrium
walls, three floors up. She hopes his work will continue to inspire
scientists, as it has for generations.<br />
<br />
“I’m glad that his work is displayed at Georgia Tech,” she says.
“Because his passion was to teach, really, to influence as many
scientists and students of science through the generations. And that’s
what he did. Two Nobel Prize winners told me personally that the books
by Dickerson and Geis were a big influence for them.”<br />
<br />
Shortly after Georgia Tech acquired the artwork in 2000, the Howard
Hughes Medical Institute purchased the Geis Archives, which includes art
as well as correspondence and private journals. But the dozen Geis
pieces in the atrium are rare treasures (even without the 1961 myoglobin
piece) that helped have given the Petit building a sense of colorful
equilibrium. The molecular art serves as a fitting offset to the massive
Cell Wall, the nine-piece, 12 foot by 24 foot painting by artist <a href="http://www.karenku.com/">Karen Stoutsenberger Ku</a> (typically is one of the first things anyone notices when they enter the Petit Institute atrium).<br />
<br />
“When we moved into the building, the Cell Wall was all there,” May
says. “But we, the biochemists, were thinking, ‘what can we do from an
artistic point of view?’ The engineers at the time were all cellular
oriented, and we were very molecular oriented. We wondered what we could
do from a visual point of view to play up the fact that this institute
brings together the molecular and the cellular, the science and the
engineering. And we remembered those illustrations from the Biochemistry
textbook. Of course! Irving Geis!”<br />
<br />
In his lifetime, Geis evolved to the point where, especially in his
later years, he was an occasional scientific lecturer. It was easy for
the casual student of the visual arts to confuse him as some kind of
molecular scientist.<br />
<br />
“My father understood the science, and he understood scientists,”
Sandy Geis says. “He could speak their language – he was an interpreter
of their language. But first and foremost, he was always an artist.”<br />
</div>
</div>
</div>
jerry grillohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04709583838863623577noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1176038451164951077.post-80319585505358864512014-09-19T10:20:00.001-07:002014-09-19T11:01:28.352-07:00Something Stupid About Being StupidHere in the 21st century social media culture, where everyone has their own personal sounding board (you know, like this blog), where empathy has given way to self-absorption, where conscience has given way to trendiness, where the fervent desperation for immediate and constant attention is worn on our cyber sleeves (i.e., "status updates"), leading to an overabundance of pixelated crazy (and occasionally useful and interesting -- you know, like this blog) shit floating all around us, it is nice to know that it is OK to be stupid ... as long as we are productively stupid. That's the essence of a 2008 essay by Martin Schwartz in the <i>Journal of Cell Science</i>.<br />
<br />
"Productive stupidity means being ignorant by choice," writes Schwartz (a
former University of Virginia professor who is now at Yale) in his essay, entitled <i>The importance of stupidity in scientific research,</i> which I found hanging on the office door of the eminently cool Tom Barker (and here: <a href="http://jcs.biologists.org/content/121/11/1771.full">http://jcs.biologists.org/content/121/11/1771.full</a>), a professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech.<br />
<br />
"In science," Barker told me, "if you know all of the answers already then
you're in the wrong place." But his contention and Schwartz's welcome message apply to almost any field involving research and researchers, like writing, and especially journalism.<br />
<br />
I've always loved
research, so I've got lots of experience with stupidity, as Schwartz
defines it. And since I don't embarrass easily, I've not been
particularly shy about letting the countless sources I've bothered know
just how stupid I am (a trait that I share with many journalists). A question I've gotten a million times from sources is, "what's your story about?" My typical stock answer: "I don't know. Haven't written it yet." Usually followed by: "I'll know more after talking with you. That's why I'm talking with you."<br />
<br />
I might have some ideas, an angle I'd like to pursue, and
specific questions that need answers. But if I'm just seeking answers
to support my preconceived notions, then I'm not really doing
research -- I'm looking to justify my point of view, which is limited by my preconceived notions. I'm not talking about being objective (a bullshit unattainable dream, considering we're humans). I'm talking about honest discovery. Self-gratifying justification is not the
same as discovery, which is a place I can't arrive at unless I begin with
stupidity (a condition which comes surprisingly easy to me).<br />
<br />
But for some researchers with untamed egos -- scientists, journalists, whoever -- this place of ignorance is repugnant, hellish, embarrassing proof that their shit does not, in fact, smell like blueberry muffins. To them I say, get over it. You were born stupid. We all were, even Einstein. Of course, this truth can be really difficult for smart people who can't remember ever being stupid, who are accustomed to knowing a lot of stuff, and getting a lot of answers right.<br />
<br />
"No doubt, reasonable
levels of confidence and emotional resilience help," writes Schwartz, who believes that education (science education in particular, but to my mind, any education, institutional or otherwise), can do more to ease the transition from learning the obvious, or knowing the known, to making our own discoveries. "The more comfortable we become
with being stupid, the deeper we will wade into the unknown and the more
likely
we are to make big discoveries."<br />
<br />
Now that's something that I can wrap my stupid head around.jerry grillohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04709583838863623577noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1176038451164951077.post-18727953695912555262014-08-13T08:38:00.003-07:002014-08-15T07:03:34.578-07:00(En)lighten up: The biology of depression<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.0.$end:0:$0:0">The
sad thing about depression (besides the fact that is is depressing), is
most people (even people with clinical depression) don't give a damn
about this particular disease, until someone like Robin
Williams takes the fast and horrible way o</span></span><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$0:0">ut. </span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$0:0">We will mourn the loss of an influential person, a great artist like Williams, and then tune into our
next flavor of the day, and the hands of time keep spinning while the
list of quiet casualties (i.e., the not famous, living their lives of
quiet desperation - thank you, Mr. Thoreau) keeps rising. And by casualties, I
don't necessarily mean suicides. For people who have struggled with a
major bout of depression, it can be a pretty serious wound by itself,
with plenty of side effects. </span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$0:0">Taking the "lighten the hell up" approach
doesn't usually work. But this isn't about eliciting cheap and temporary
sympathy for these folks (most of whom lead the most ordinary of lives,
content the great majority of the time). It's about awareness, and
understanding a widespread issue (and maybe supporting whatever measures
and efforts there are to reduce the bad shit). </span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$0:0">Since the news broke about Williams' suicide, the responses have run the gamut from one extreme to another, from criticism that he took the coward's way out, to the deepest sympathy. Personally, having faced the D-demon myself, I fall into the latter category. I certainly can't empathize with a person who was as globally beloved as Robin Williams, but can definitely understand the problem of facing the dark defenseless and hopeless. </span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$0:0">Depression is a complex thing. It isn't a case of the blues, not just that. Nor is it exactly like addiction, as some cyber-therapists have alleged -- admit you have a problem and deal with it, damn it ... go to a 12-step program! The thing is, as with most disease, of course you have to admit a problem and deal with it, otherwise, the disease generally wins. Like with cancer or diabetes or so many other things. </span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$0:0">With that in mind -- the squishy nexus of biology and depression -- here's a link that might help you better understand the biology behind depression: <a href="http://well.wvu.edu/articles/the_biology_of_depression">http://well.wvu.edu/articles/the_biology_of_depression</a></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$0:0"><br /></span></span></span></span></span>
<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$0:0">There's also this: <a href="http://www.allaboutdepression.com/cau_02.html">http://www.allaboutdepression.com/cau_02.html</a></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$0:0"><br /></span></span></span></span></span>
<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$0:0">This also is really interesting: <a href="http://www.yalescientific.org/2011/02/uncovering-the-biology-of-depression/">http://www.yalescientific.org/2011/02/uncovering-the-biology-of-depression/</a></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$0:0"><br /></span></span></span></span></span>
<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$0:0"><br /></span></span></span></span></span>
Some of what we know is, at least<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$0:0"> 15
million adults in the U.S. suffer from a major depressive disorder in a
given year; people with depression are four times as likely to develop a
heart attack than those without a history of the illness (and after a
heart attack, they are at a significantly increased risk of death or
second heart attack); there is a high prevalence of depression that
co-occurs with other illnesses (cancer, AIDS, Parkinson's); major
depressive disorder is the leading cause of disability in the U.S. for
ages 15-44 (and the leading cause of disability worldwide among persons
five and older -- FIVE!!??); depression ranks among the top three
workplace issues, following only family crisis and stress (which often
lead to depression ... such a vicious cycle); its annual toll on U.S.
businesses amounts to about $70 billion in medical expenditures, lost
productivity and other costs; oh, and there are more than 30,000
suicides in the U.S. each year, at least two thirds of them caused by
major depression (Robin Williams, hello!). </span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$0:0">The good news is, about 80
percent of those treated for depression show an improvement in their
symptoms generally within four to six weeks of beginning medication,
psychotherapy, attending support groups or a combination of these; but
here's the thing: Despite its high treatment success rate, nearly two
out of three people suffering with depression do not actively seek nor
receive proper treatment and an estimated 50% of unsuccessful treatment,
or non-treatment for depression is due to medical non-compliance
(including financial factors). </span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$0:0"><br /></span></span></span></span></span>
<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$0:0">Meanwhile, smart people are working on the problem. Here's something about research that Georgia Tech is involved in: </span></span></span></span></span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$0:0"> <a href="http://news.emory.edu/stories/2014/04/precise_brain_mapping_improves_response_to_dbs/">http://news.emory.edu/stories/2014/04/precise_brain_mapping_improves_response_to_dbs/</a></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$0:0">The bottom line is, most folks haven't
read this far because, quite honestly, depression isn't sexy (as opposed to liver disease and ribosomes and molecular biology and the other sexy stuff you're used to reading on this blog). Most folks just don't care, and they won't,
until someone like Robin Williams takes himself out (to wit, this blog entry), and even then, most folks are typically wired to a 24-hour news cycle, in which
today's celebrity suicide gives way to tomorrow's new shiny thing. </span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$0:0">Good luck
out there, be kind to each other. The world will keep spinning either
way, at least for another four billion years or so. How it spins and how
nice the ride is for the humans tethered to the big blue ball depends
on the lot of us.</span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<i><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$0:0">P.S. </span></span></span></span></span></i><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$0:0"><i><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0"><span data-reactid=".w.1:3:1:$comment10154437199730720_10154438708145720:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.3.0.$end:0:$0:0">Here's a blog post by yours truly, of a more personal (and hopefully
helpful) nature:
<a href="http://fourcrickets.wordpress.com/2014/08/13/this-one-got-to-me/">http://fourcrickets.wordpress.com/2014/08/13/this-one-got-to-me/</a></span></span></span></span></span></i><a href="http://fourcrickets.wordpress.com/2014/08/13/this-one-got-to-me/"> </a></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />jerry grillohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04709583838863623577noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1176038451164951077.post-54903861773192981252014-08-11T04:26:00.001-07:002014-08-11T10:22:10.727-07:00Holy Grail: Getting closer to an HIV cure<style>
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This is the one. This is the project that Phil Santangelo will
be talking about when he’s 80 and retired and rocking on the front porch, in
some distant future – a promising, healthier future for mankind because, well, this is the one.</div>
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Santangelo, associate professor in the Wallace H. Coulter
Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, is
helping lead a research team that was recently awarded a $5.5 million grant from
the NIH/NIAID (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases) for their
role in a national, multipronged effort to once and for all cure HIV/AIDS.</div>
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“This is like the Holy Grail for a molecular imaging person
who’s interested in infectious disease. From my point of view, this is it, this
is huge,” says Santangelo, who is partnering with Emory’s Francois Villinger as
principal investigators on the research, supported by the aforementioned R01
(which is the original and historically oldest grant mechanism used by the
National Institutes of Health, or NIH).</div>
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The prospect of eliminating HIV from infected patients may
be achievable with novel anti-retroviral therapies, but it would require new
tools with greater sensitivity than what is now available. So the research aims
to create and improve imaging technology to better monitor HIV reservoirs, the thought being that if you attack these elusive reservoirs, you can stop HIV. Santangelo says a finish line is in sight. Almost.</div>
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Here's the dilemma. A person who's infected with the HIV virus is treated with anti-retroviral drugs. They appear to work. Within a month, the virus is undetectable in the blood stream. It's been suppressed. But if you take the patient off the drugs, the virus comes back. It rebounds. "The drugs work but they are not sufficient to clear the virus. And really, we don't know why that is yet," Santangelo says. "Where is the virus? Where are the active reservoirs during suppression?"</div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The prospect of eliminating HIV from
infected patients could be close at hand, but such a lofty goal will require new
tools with greater sensitivity than currently available to monitor the progress
of novel anti-retroviral therapies – not only in blood but also in organs that
harbor such reservoirs and sites of residual viral replication in vivo. </span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“We’re not necessarily in this project,
quote, creating the cure. But we’re creating a tool that’s going to give us a
lot more information about how you might go about doing that,” Santangelo says.
“Otherwise, it’s a shot in the dark, you’re just trying <ins cite="mailto:Philip%20Santangelo" datetime="2014-08-10T20:47">different
approaches</ins>. <ins cite="mailto:Philip%20Santangelo" datetime="2014-08-10T20:47"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></ins>It’s
tr<ins cite="mailto:ggrillo3" datetime="2014-08-10T22:32">ia</ins>l and error.
In the drug development world, trial and error is useful, but not ideal, <ins cite="mailto:Philip%20Santangelo" datetime="2014-08-10T20:48">and </ins>certainly
not efficient”</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This research and resulting
improvements in imaging technology, he says, will eventually give drug
developers more information than they’ve had before, about how drugs are
affecting very specific parts of the body. </span></div>
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“It’s about giving them much more powerful information about
what’s happening, as opposed to downstream information,” says Santangelo, whose
research areas include <span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">molecular imaging, nano-biophotonics,
and optical microscopy</span>. The long-term aim is to cure HIV, he adds, “and
we’re working on a tool to help facilitate that.” </div>
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And that, he adds, is the reason the research got its
funding – the NIH wants this tool in its toolbox. The grant covers five years,
but it’s been a seven-year journey to this point. It began with a discussion
between Santangelo and Emory professor Eric Hunter, whose research is focused
on <i><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-style: normal; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">the molecular biology of HIV and
other retroviruses. </span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-style: normal; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">“We were sitting
around a table and Eric basically said, ‘one thing we’d like to know is, where
is the virus? Is there a way to <ins cite="mailto:Philip%20Santangelo" datetime="2014-08-10T20:49">image </ins>this?’ I said, ‘I have no idea, but
let’s see if we can figure that out.’ So I went back to the drawing board and
thought about ways to approach the problem,” Santangelo says. “But that’s how
it started – a group of people sitting around the table, asking, ‘how do we address
this?’ and me being crazy enough to say, ‘I’ll try this,’ because I don’t say
no to anything.”</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-style: normal; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Hunter introduced
Santangelo to researcher/pathologist Villinger</span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">.
They went after and received a $30,000 boost from the Woodruff Foundation, then
got $100,000 from the Georgia Research Alliance, “and these were so important
in pushing the momentum forward,” Santangelo says. </span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Then they received $450,000 from the
NIH in the form of an Exploratory/Developmental Research Grant Award (R21) and
now, $5.5 million, to support the work of an all-star team of researchers,
including (among others) principal investigators Santangelo and Villinger, as
well as Ray Schinazi, who directs the Laboratory of Biochemical Pharmacology at
Emory, who is a co-investigator. </span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The overall goal, according to
Santangelo, is to create or improve an imaging tool that will determine how the
virus is being affected by a new drug strategy, and also to help promote new
drugs that Schinazi is working on – “to clear HIV, and also to make current
drugs more effective,” says Santangelo, who believes that by enhancing current
imaging technology, particularly CT (computed tomography, or CAT scanning) and
PET (positron emission tomography), he</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;"> can
track the reservoirs, including active viral reservoirs.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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“If you can figure out where the reservoirs are, if you can
figure out how long they are being affected by the drugs, and how the drugs are
actually changing the reservoirs, we might be able to clear them,” says
Santangelo, who looks like a kid
contemplating a super toy that hasn’t been invented yet. “And if you can clear
these reservoirs, you could cure AIDS, and if you can cure AIDS, well, that
would be pretty awesome.”</div>
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jerry grillohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04709583838863623577noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1176038451164951077.post-42141280357611275422014-08-04T11:18:00.001-07:002014-08-04T11:18:20.310-07:00Seeds of InnovationThree interdisciplinary teams with wide-ranging goals at the Parker H.
Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience have gotten off to a
fast start on pioneering explorations in biotechnology, thanks to a
homegrown program that supports innovative early-stage research. <br /><br />The
winning teams of the 2014 Petit Bioengineering and Bioscience
Collaborative Seed Grant are working to improve the prediction of
disease (Hang Lu and Patrick McGrath), design better drug delivery
strategies to fight cancer (M.G. Finn and Susan Thomas), and unveil (and
better understand) the processes through which cell receptor signaling
is initiated (Robert Dickson and Cheng Zhu). <br /><br />Each of these
fledgling collaborative teams was awarded $100,000 for two years to
kick-start new research en route to long-range aspirations. <br /><br />“The
seed grant program is fantastic, because it supports bold ideas that
don’t have preliminary data,” says Lu, a professor in the School of
Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. “Patrick and I have been wanting
to work on this particular idea of evolving model systems to study
multigenic diseases. We are extremely happy to have the support to
pursue it now. We’re hoping to garner preliminary data to seek NIH
funding in the long run.” <br /><br />The program, now in its third year,
gets to the heart of the Petit Institute mission, as it encourages a
multidisciplinary approach to cutting-edge research, with each team
bringing together an engineer and a scientist in a collaborative
research endeavor, addressing complex biotech challenges by combining
the distinct strengths of each lab. For example, as Lu and McGrath
(assistant professor in the School of Biology) explain in their
proposal, “Technologically and conceptually, what we propose here has
never been done before. This pilot is truly enabled by the genomics
know-how of the McGrath lab and the technological advancement of the Lu
lab, which is a unique combination not found elsewhere.” <br /><br />By
applying a directed evolutionary approach, they expect to eventually be
able to identify interacting genes that can be used as biomarkers for
lifespan and age-related diseases, “and also as synergistic drug targets
that can be used to ameliorate side-effects by lowering dose-levels of
pharmaceuticals.” <br /><br />Zhu, professor in the Wallace H. Coulter
Department of Biomedical Engineering, he and Dickson, professor in the
School of Chemistry and Biochemistry), are “trying to develop methods
that allow in situ measurements of protein-protein interactions in live
cells,” says Zhu. “The lacking of such methods hinders the development
of a broad field in biology.” Currently, no method allows this kind of
crucial measurement, Zhu and Dickson say in their proposal. <br /><br />Meanwhile,
Finn (professor and chair in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry)
and Thomas (assistant professor in the George W. Woodruff School of
Mechanical Engineering) are working on a project with what they say will
ultimately “impact the drug delivery field by introducing a new
chemical means to temporally control drug release,” according to their
proposal. <br /><br />“In some ways, this approach runs counter to the
prevailing drive in the field toward ever more sophisticated ways to
respond to environmental cues,” the researchers say, adding, “While such
technologies are undoubtedly valuable, there is also value in a
cleavage mechanism that one can use like an alarm clock.” Stretching the
analogy a bit further, they describe an alarm clock in which the start
and end times, and intensity (and composition of the alarm) are all
programmable. <br /><br />“Results from this study,” Finn and Thomas say in
their proposal, “will form the basis of numerous collaborative grant
applications and a long-term collaboration between two labs with
distinct but synergistic expertise aimed towards the design and
effective drug delivery strategies for cancer therapy.” <br /><br />Funding
for the seed grants comes mainly from the Petit Institute’s endowment as
well as contributions from the College of Sciences and the College of
Engineering. Each research team receives $50,000 a year for two years,
with the second year of funding contingent on submission of an external
collaborative grant proposal.jerry grillohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04709583838863623577noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1176038451164951077.post-7451345247892283682014-07-28T11:53:00.002-07:002014-07-28T11:53:49.755-07:00Altered States: Study offers new hope for people with sickle cell diseaseEd Botchwey is not a hematologist. He’s very clear about that.
Botchwey runs a tissue-engineering lab at the Parker H. Petit Institute
for Bioengineering and Bioscience, with a focus on regenerative
medicine. <br /><br />That’s been his professional history – tissue
engineering and regenerative medicine. But there’s a piece of personal
history that carries a bit more influence, and that, perhaps more than
anything else, is what led Botchwey and his research team to publish in
the journal Blood, the most cited peer-reviewed publication in the field
of hematology. <br /><br />Their research and paper, with the running
title, “Sphingolipid Metabolism in Sickle Cell Disease,” represents a
sharp turn for Botchwey and his colleagues, who shed new light on causes
for some of the disease’s pervasive and devastating symptoms, while
offering new hope for patients who struggle with the disease, people
like his sister. <br /><br />“As it turns out, my sister has sickle cell
disease, and I have a student, the first author of this paper, Anthony
Awojoodu – his sister has it. So this is something we felt very
passionate about,” says Botchwey, associate professor in the Wallace H.
Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering (Coulter Department), who
didn’t set out to research sickle cell disease (SCD). It just sort of
happened. He was just following a logical trail of research. <br /><br />“We’d
been looking at certain classes of signaling lipids and how they
regulate inflammation. Part of our goal was, and still is, exploiting
certain inflammatory responses to help in tissue regeneration,” Botchwey
says. “But along the way, we recognized that some of the enzymes that
are central components in the metabolism and production of these
signaling lipids were responsive to stresses in cell membranes.” <br /><br />Like,
for example, the stresses that cause the telltale geometric distortion
of red blood cell (RBC) membranes in SCD. It
occurred to Botchwey that SCD would make a great model system in which
to observe the relationship between membrane stresses, inflammation and
the metabolism of these sphingolipids. Turns out, there’s a very close
relationship. <br /><br />Their findings reveal for the first time that
sphingolipid metabolism is indeed dysregulated, or altered in SCD.
Membrane stresses associated with SCD activate sphingomyelinase (SMase),
an enzyme that contributes to progression of the disease (SMase has
been implicated in vascular inflammation). SMase, in concert with other
enzymes, also causes elevated production of microparticles, which
contribute to what Botchwey calls, “this chronic inflammatory state that
underlies so much of the pathology of sickle cell disease.” <br /><br />What
encourages Botchwey is the research also illuminates potential new
strategies to regulate inflammation through modulating sphingolipid
metabolism – results that may also be applicable to other red blood cell
disorders, not just SCD. What’s more, a promising therapeutic solution
is already close at hand – the antidepressant, amitriptyline. <br /><br />“We
wanted to know, can you pharmacologically inhibit SMase in order to
reduce these pro-inflammatory microparticles. And we found that, in
fact, we can, and we’re excited about it. If you can cut off one of the
primary means whereby sickled red blood cells are perpetuating a chronic
inflammatory state in the patient, then you may be cutting off a wide
range of the disease consequences associated with SCD,” says Botchwey.
“Amytriptyline happened to factor quite highly in our survey of
potential inhibitors of SMase. You can find certain papers that will
make an indirect association to what we’ve shown.” <br /><br />Sure enough,
there are 30-plus year-old research papers that explore the inhibitive
effects of tricyclic antidepressants on SMase in various contexts, and
Botchwey’s team connected the complicated dots. But there has been next
to no research on the role of SMase and sphingolipid dysregulation in
SCD (a disease that affects millions worldwide), and that surprises
Botchwey. <br /><br />“It’s a mystery to me.” says Botchwey. “When you think
about a disease as prevalent as this one, as well understood as it is,
in terms of what the underlying genetic mutation is, and you consider
all the tools we have at our disposal for correcting such mutations, you
would think this would be a curable disease. I’ve lamented the fact
that it’s not cured, but never considered that I might be part of the
research that might lead to a cure.” <br /><br />Botchwey, whose work is
supported by the NIH and NSF, as well as the Petit Institute and Coulter
Department, led a research team that included Awojoodu, a native
Nigerian who was responsible for recruiting Petit Scholar, Alicia Lane,
to the team. <br /><br />“They struck up a very productive working and
mentoring relationship, and this paper is partly the culmination of
that,” says Botchwey, whose collaborators in the study also include
Phillip Keegan, Yuying Zhang, Kevin Lynch from the University of
Virginia, and BME assistant professor Manu Platt. <br /><br />Botchwey, not a
blood guy, says this research represents a new direction for him, one
he might not have taken if he didn’t make the move several years ago
from the University of Virginia to the Georgia Institute of Technology,
and the Petit Institute. <br /><br />“Like I said, I’m not a hematology
researcher, but the opportunity to take risks resonated with me. It’s a
risk to go in new directions, and Georgia Tech enabled me to take that
risk,” he says. “The multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary environment
here is one in which I felt comfortable asking what I perceived to be a
frontier question that impacted a disease I felt passionately about. I
don’t know if that would have happened if I’d stayed where I was.” jerry grillohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04709583838863623577noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1176038451164951077.post-47682059917135726412014-07-25T06:30:00.001-07:002014-07-25T06:30:16.571-07:00Reading the Signals: Something about Your Liver
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<br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-outline-level: 1;">
<span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">Sometimes, it’s OK to blame
the messenger. I’m not referring to me, of course. I’m referring to Notch,
which is a what, not a who. Notch is a cell signaling system, a protein, and it
exists in all animals, including you.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-outline-level: 1;">
<span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">Notch plays a key role in embryonic
development, and in our adult selves it’s responsible for a bunch of different
cell differentiation processes, employing the “psst, pass it down,” mode of
message delivery. The first molecule in a signal pathway receives the note and
activates another molecule, which activates another, and so on, until the last
molecule is activated and the cell function is carried out. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-outline-level: 1;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-outline-level: 1;">
<span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">So, they pass along messages,
these molecules that comprise Notch. We need Notch. It is important in some
vital cell functions, but sometimes those chatty molecules get a little too
loud and, quite frankly, need to shut the hell up, because higher level Notch
signaling and abnormal activation can lead to bad things, like cancer, or
multiple sclerosis. Or, as a group of Georgia Tech researchers found out, loud-mouthed
Notch can make a diseased liver even worse.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-outline-level: 1;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-outline-level: 1;">
<span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">They found this out using
zebrafish with fibrotic livers – livers with lots of scar tissue, a symptom of
chronic liver disease. Fibrosis typically result in cirrhosis, which means a
loss of liver function, which usually comes with a grim choice between a liver
transplant and certain death. Basically, it’s a perfect storm of terrible
things that feeds on itself, because sustained fibrosis is like putting
handcuffs on hepatocytes (liver cells), inhibiting their ability to regenerate
and therefore make a heroic, therapeutic response. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-outline-level: 1;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-outline-level: 1;">
<span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">At it’s essence, this is a
communication problem, </span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">based on the study, led by Chong Hyun Shin, a really nice
scientist from South Korea who runs a lab at the Parker H. Petit Institute for
Bioengineering and Biosience at Tech (See her picture? Doesn’t she look nice?
She is. And she’s smart. And if you want your pickled liver to ever see the
bright side of life again, you should be nice to her if you ever meet her,
because her research could, maybe, lead you down that sunny path).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-outline-level: 1;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="mso-add-space: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Anyway, Shin and her team studied
(among other things) the effects that different levels of signaling have on the
regeneration of these hepatocytes. Specifically, they discovered that lower
level Notch signaling promotes cell regeneration (which is good), while high
levels suppressed it (bad). And they discovered another signaling system, Wnt,
plays a key role in managing Notch’s message. Wnt, basically, is the guy at the
sound board turning down the bass to give the song some needed equilibrium. In
other words, Wnt’s interaction with Notch modulates the therapeutic,
regenerative capacity of liver cells: Wnt signals can suppress Notch signals, so
basically, when Wnt is loud enough to suppress Notch, hepatocyte regeneration
can happen. Heal thyselves, liver cells, heal thyselves!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="mso-add-space: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="mso-add-space: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">The data, says Shin, “suggest
an essential interplay between Wnt and Notch signaling during hepatocyte
regeneration in the fibrotic liver</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">, providing legitimate therapeutic strategies
for chronic liver failure … ” And there’s the hopeful news for you and your
abused liver.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-outline-level: 1;">
<span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Their findings were published recently
in the journal <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hepatology</i>, so grab a
copy from the magazine rack. I think there’s also a feature story on how the
interaction of tequila with some Mexican foods makes your liver do a salsa
dance, along with recipes, Q&A’s, and advice from some of the most popular
and sexy celebrity scientists working in the field. Or something.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Bottom line, I guess, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">is that Shin’s study offers an opportunity to
balance some of the fundamental drawbacks in stem cell therapy, while opening
up new avenues of cellular regeneration therapy, endogenously – inside of you, in
other words, which, if you think about it, takes us to a whole new frontier in
the locally grown movement. But I wouldn’t start shopping for new, organic human
livers at the farmer’s market any time soon. </span></div>
jerry grillohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04709583838863623577noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1176038451164951077.post-10447632603089342242014-07-20T20:45:00.002-07:002014-08-07T08:44:44.993-07:00Astrobiology and Looking Way, Way Back<style>
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<br />
<h3 style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">From now on, whenever I grab a
cup of coffee at le Petit </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Café, I’m going to give silent thanks to Loren Williams
for his persistent badgering about 20 years ago, when he was part of the
committee that planned the building I work in, home of the Parker H. Petit
Institute of Bioengineering and Bioscience.</span></h3>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></h3>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Every meeting I’d say, ‘I want a
coffee shop.’ They were talking about designing bathrooms, labs, offices, and I kept
saying that I wanted a coffee shop. I’m from Seattle,” says Williams, who kept
hammering away at the committee’s leader, Bob Nerem (founding director of the Petit Institute). “Finally Bob said, ‘If you shut up, we’ll get a coffee shop.’”</span></h3>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></h3>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Williams is a chemist who calls
himself an ‘astrobiologist,’ which is one of those professions that hasn’t
quite been fully realized yet, like ‘time traveller.’ Come to think of it, he’s
kind of a time traveller, too. </span></h3>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></h3>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“An astrobiologist, generally, is
somebody who studies life in the whole universe,” says Williams, who directs
the NASA-funded Center for Ribosomal Origins and Evolution (Ribo Evo) at
Georgia Tech. “Part of that is trying to determine if there is life beyond
Earth, and part of that is trying to understand the organic chemistry within
our solar system, in space.”</span></h3>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></h3>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In considering the
possibility of extraterrestrial life, and looking for the cosmic chemistry that may herald such life, Williams and his team are peeling away billions of
years of evolution to understand prebiotic processes of Earth.</span></h3>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></h3>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Our primary focus is on
understanding life on the ancient Earth, and we’re looking all the way back,
four billion years,” says Williams, who thinks of it as rewinding the
tape of life. Instead of cutting into an old tree to read about the climate 200
years ago, his lab uses the ribosome to study ancient biology, or pre-biology.
The ribosome is the oldest macromolecular assembly of extant life, a molecular
fossil imprinted with clues from the dawn of existence.</span></h3>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></h3>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Part of NASA’s mandate is to
study the Earth, the history and the future of life, its part of their job,”
Williams says. “If we want to know what to look for on Mars or Titan or another
place, the ancient Earth serves as a good proxy.”</span></h3>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></h3>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Maybe it’s fitting that a guy
who looks back into prehistory for clues about life’s origins (and hints for what to look for on distant worlds) should have one
of the most prehistoric-looking websites on the Georgia Tech campus. Looks can
be deceiving. This is a case of ugly duck syndrome gone amok. </span></h3>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></h3>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">His site, <a href="http://ww2.chemistry.gatech.edu/~williams/">http://ww2.chemistry.gatech.edu/~williams/</a>, is a cyber relic, a homely homemade site that Williams created in
1992, and he hasn't updated the look since, writing the html code himself. But if you go his site and click
the “Molecular Interactions” link, it takes you to the most visited site on the
World Wide Web (according to Google) for, well … molecular interactions.</span></h3>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></h3>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Go ahead and do a Google search.
You don’t need quote marks. There at the top of 9.9 million search results for molecular interactions is a
tool that Williams created, and updates, and has even translated to
Spanish to reach a wider audience.</span></h3>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></h3>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“I originally wrote that up for
my students and put it on the web, because it seemed like a safe place to have
it, and they could have access. Somebody put a counter on my site and wondered
why I was getting hundreds of downloads a day. It was that document,” Williams
says. “Ten people are reading it at any given time, students all over the world, every
day. I swear I didn’t do that on purpose. It just seemed like a good way to organize my stuff and not lose it."</span></h3>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></h3>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">So, Williams is a world-renowned scientist in one the world's leading institutes for training engineers, and he'll happily explain the difference between the two professions. </span></h3>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></h3>
<h3 style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">"Engineering and science are two very different things. For example, you'd never want to drive across a bridge built by a physicist," he says. "But if the bridge fell down, and you really want to understand gravity, don't ask an engineer."</span></h3>
jerry grillohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04709583838863623577noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1176038451164951077.post-20620416464172873632014-07-17T11:24:00.000-07:002014-07-17T11:27:08.228-07:00Inside the Engineer's Mind<i>This is from the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience web site. </i><br />
<i>Here's a link: <a href="http://ibb.gatech.edu/hg_news/309011">http://ibb.gatech.edu/hg_news/309011</a></i><br />
<i>Or, you can read it here:</i><br />
<br />
You know this one: “The optimist sees the glass as half-full and the
pessimist sees the glass as half-empty, but the engineer sees a glass
that’s twice as big as it needs to be.” It’s an old joke that
demonstrates, anecdotally, how engineers think, which is something that
Joe LeDoux, an associate professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department
of Biomedical Engineering (BME), has been very interested in. <br />
<br />
But,
rather than ruin an old joke by explaining the punch line, LeDoux took a
more empirical approach to understanding the engineering mind. He
designed and taught a course on the subject, then wrote about it. And
last month, LeDoux and a group of Georgia Institute of Technology
students presented a paper to the American Society for Engineering
Education (ASEE) that asks, what is it that makes someone an engineer,
and what distinguishes engineers from other professionals? <br />
<br />
The
paper, written by LeDoux, BME research scientist Alisha Waller, and a
trio of undergraduates who actually took the class – Jacquelyn Borinski,
Kimberly Height and Elaine McCormick – shares the co-authors’
experience in the course, called “Habits of the Engineering Mind,”
taught last year by LeDoux at Oxford University as part of Georgia
Tech’s study abroad program. <br />
<br />
“Taken with a sense of adventure, I
decided to teach a course on a topic that I had been thinking about for
some time,” LeDoux writes in the paper, presented last month in
Indianapolis at the ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition. “The idea was
to explore the possibility that engineers have a characteristic way of
thinking.” <br />
<br />
But there was no textbook, no syllabus, and LeDoux
had to basically develop the course from scratch, without the aid of
pre-existing conceptions (except, perhaps for a few old jokes about
engineers) or guidelines for how to teach it. “As a result, I was a true
‘co-learner’ with my students,” he says. “It was such a powerful and
rewarding experience that three of my students and I decided to write a
paper about it, to share our experiences with the broader academic
engineering community.” <br />
<br />
So he developed a set of five long-term
learning objectives to help guide the way. A year or more after having
taken the course, students will (1) have an understanding of the
fundamental ways of engineering thinking, as evidenced by their ability
to estimate unknown quantities, represent complex problems
diagrammatically, engage in model-based reasoning, and employ multiple
engineering habits of the mind as a set of lenses through which to view
and think about real-world problems and systems; (2) be able to
critically read, analyze, and discuss what philosophers of engineering
have written about engineering ways of thinking, and be able to
formulate and defend their own arguments about what they think are
engineering ways of thinking; (3) see the value of, and be adept at,
seeing opportunities for employing engineering habits of the mind as
thinking tools in every day, non-engineering contexts; (4) have
established a connection between the engineering habits of the mind that
were identified and explored in class to their own personal interests
and experiences; and (5) recognize that a person’s ways of thinking are
influenced by their profession, culture, upbringing, and context, and
that a much richer understanding of a problem or system is developed by
employing multiple ways of thinking. <br />
<br />
The course was dense with
reading material, and writing assignments, and discussions, and much of
the content was philosophical, rather than technical in nature, so this
was definitely outside the norm for a traditional engineering professor
and his students. Nonetheless, LeDoux reflects, “the course exceeded my
expectations,” and he wonders if success in the Study Abroad program
means the course could become a permanent offering on the Georgia Tech
campus. <br />
<br />
According to LeDoux, the students “learned a great deal
about what it means to be an engineer by reading and reflecting on
philosophical writings about engineering, and by learning and applying
engineering ways of thinking to make meaning of systems that they
encounter in their everyday lives. I believe these students are now more
aware of their own thinking processes and those of other engineers, and
are more sensitive to how these thinking processes affect the work they
do and the designs they create, which will, in the end, make them more
effective engineers and problem solvers.”jerry grillohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04709583838863623577noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1176038451164951077.post-39933802265134866492014-07-17T06:36:00.001-07:002014-07-17T08:36:11.024-07:00The Scientific MethodThis was found and shared by my good and brilliant friend Alan Hall, the definitive Renaissance Man (check out his terrific reporting and writing at socionomics.net). Anyway, here's an old video of a great and still useful old lecture by Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman. It's science for the rest of us, and a worthwhile 10 minutes:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.geek.com/news/richard-feynman-explains-the-scientific-method-in-1964-lecture-1488517/">http://www.geek.com/news/richard-feynman-explains-the-scientific-method-in-1964-lecture-1488517/ </a>jerry grillohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04709583838863623577noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1176038451164951077.post-20478516135634223152014-07-16T11:00:00.001-07:002014-07-16T12:08:41.453-07:00I Enter the World of Not So Mad Science<style>
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I’ve always had kind of a soft spot for mad scientists. Always
been a fan. Good or evil, it didn’t matter. I didn’t care if they were trying
to save mankind or enslave it, to improve the world or destroy it. </div>
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<br /></div>
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From Frankenstein to Frank ‘N’ Furter, whether they were conquering
death or causing it, these dudes (and they were pretty much all dudes, the
glass ceiling being what it is in mad science like most other professions) captivated
me, held me in a chemical spell. Maybe it was their earnest, creative spark, or
their penetrating sincerity and faith in whatever scheme they were engaged in.
They were always so damned sure of themselves, the mad ones.</div>
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<br /></div>
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In fact, these guys made such an impression on me at an
early age that I created a cartoon character called Poindexter in high school.
It became a cartoon strip in college, called ‘Poinzy.’ It’s your typical boy
meets world, boy tries to destroy world story.</div>
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Standing about 5’2” and weighing in at 92 pounds, Poinzy is
picked on mercilessly by the other kids at school. As a means for revenge, he
tries to concoct a chemical quick fix, but is mutilated in a lab explosion that
blows off both of his hands, forcing him to build new metal hands – deadly
claws, really – using his teeth. </div>
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First he exacts terrible revenge at school, and then becomes
a self-made (and worse, self-taught) megalomaniacal scientist, a not-so-super
villain whose amazing, impossible inventions always seem to backfire, if he
doesn’t destroy them himself on a whim. </div>
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In one strip, for example, he builds a planet-sized
spaceship and fills it with thousands of Poindexter clones, the ultimate weapon
to destroy the Earth. But at the last moment, he orders his clones to fly the ship
into the sun, which they do, singing “We Are Marching to Pretoria,” as they
sweat and melt faithfully in their stadium seats, while Poindexter flies off in
an escape pod.</div>
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<br /></div>
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By the way, this all started in the 1970s, before <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Star Wars</i> and its planet-killing Death
Star(s), before Freddy Kruger and his murderous claw hands, and before the
animated TV show, ‘Dexter’s Laboratory’ (the only similarities between that
Dexter and mine was that they both wore lab coats and glasses – mine definitely
wasn’t for kids). So, while much of Poindexter was derivative (I blame the
movies and their perverse if sometimes subliminal impact on me), it didn’t
steal from those things.</div>
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<br /></div>
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But it didn’t occur to me until fairly recently that
Poindexter was really about biotechnology. He cloned himself, repeatedly,
building and destroying army after army of contrived doppelgangers. He changed
himself, gave himself wings and gills, and at one point, an array of bionic
weapon limbs: eight arms that could shoot bullets or fire or missiles, or grab,
stab and cut (an incarnation that my co-conspirator in much of this “work,”
Mike Ricks, and I dubbed ‘Cephalopod’). </div>
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Basically, Poindexter was an evil bioengineer, which means
he’s the opposite of the people I write about at Georgia Tech, in the Parker H.
Petit Institute for Biotechnology and Bioscience. The smart people I work with
use engineering principles to analyze and solve problems that plague mankind,
while Poindexter uses his knowledge of science and engineering to cause them. </div>
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That minor difference aside, this is my roundabout way of
saying that Poindexter is kind of what led me here to Georgia Tech, via the
scenic route. I’ve worked as an Indian in a Wild West show, a pin chaser and
short order cook in not one, but two bowling alleys. I’ve worked on factory
production lines, in different warehouses, on a construction crew; I sold
knives door to door, and operated a printing press; been a truck driver, a
sports writer and a business journalist. But now, I’m as close to being a
Boswellian Ygor as I’ll ever be, and my back is still straight. Give it time.</div>
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I have a hard time describing myself as some kind of ‘science
writer,’ considering my preparation for this gig involved, among
other things, creating a mad scientist cartoon character, and repeated viewings
of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fantastic Voyage</i>. There's the 25-plus years of journalism, sure ... but I haven’t taken
a biology class in 30 years. Maybe I’ll catch up eventually. For now, I'm content in being a simple storyteller, a guy who writes about really cool stuff and people at a really cool university.</div>
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So, my intent is to use this blog as a place for
stories from Georgia Tech’s bio-community (it used to be a bio-quad, but we’re
growing). Please understand (as if it isn't clear enough already) that the human behind this is only half-mad, and not a scientist, but also remember what film director David Cronenberg said: “Everybody’s
a mad scientist, and life is their lab. We’re all trying to experiment to find
a way to live, to solve problems, to fend off madness and chaos.” </div>
jerry grillohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04709583838863623577noreply@blogger.com3