A team of scientists has figured out a way
to chill blood platelets in mice for safer, more effective
transfusion. Most often used to prevent bleeding in people
undergoing cancer chemotherapy, human platelets must be stored
at room temperature because refrigerated cells do not stay in
circulation long after transfusion. A study in the Sept. 12 Science by
(from left) Thomas Stossel, Karin Hoffmeister, John Hartwig,
and their colleagues shows that adding the proper sugar coating
to platelets made them last longer and function better after
transfusion into mice.
Proteins are often full of surprises.
Independent research directed by Wade Harper and Dieter Wolf
reveals that those carrying BTB/POZ domains play a crucial role
in proteasome-mediated degradation. Harper and colleagues
working on C. elegans and Wolf’s group working on fission yeast
came to this conclusion when they found that BTB/POZ homologues
pass off protein substrates to ubiquitin ligases, thus
targeting them to the proteasome to be broken down and
recycled. Their work appears in the Aug. 31 Nature and the September Molecular Cell, respectively.
The Medical School has made a significant
commitment to the emerging field of systems biology in
announcing the creation of the Department of Systems Biology,
one of the first department-level systems biology programs in
the nation. The new department, to be led by Marc Kirschner,
seeks to build an understanding of how cells, organs, and whole
animals work as systems. It will be HMS’s first
completely new department in more than two decades and, with
more than 20 faculty recruitments expected, one of its largest.
Stefan Heller (left) and Huawei Li have
isolated stem cells from the inner ear of adult mice. Grafting
experiments have shown that these cells may be pluripotent,
because they differentiate into cells of all three germ layers
in the developing embryo. In addition, a subset forms hairlike
cells that have characteristics of inner ear hair cells. In
humans, loss of these hair cells is irreversible and a major
cause of deafness. The findings, already available online, will
appear in the October Nature
Medicine.
