For the 19th year, Georgia Tech is hosting the Suddath Symposium in honor of Leroy "Bud" Suddath, a late professor of the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry.  This year's meeting focuses on the ribosome and its structure, function and evolution, exploring scientific implications ranging from understanding the origin and early evolution of life to the development of novel pharmaceuticals.  The symposium is organized by the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience (IBB), the Center for Ribosomal Origins and Evolution, and NASA on April 1-2.

“We are excited that this year's symposium will feature foremost experts on the ribosome, including the 2009 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry – Professor Ada Yonath (Weizmann Institute)," said Adegboyega Oyelere, assistant professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the symposium chair.

This annual symposium celebrates the life and contributions of Suddath by discussing the latest developments in the fields of bioengineering and bioscience. The speakers include leading researchers from across the globe. Due to the high quality of the speakers, the 2011 meeting sold out weeks ago.

“If you can not register for the in-person meeting, which is now at capacity, you still have an opportunity to attend virtually. We are using social networking tools for world-wide participation in the meeting,“ said co-organizer, Loren Williams, professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and director of the Center for Ribosomal Origins and Evolution.

Georgia Tech has partnered with NASA to showcase the symposium, in its entirety, over the internet. Virtual participants will view the presentations in real-time and can chat with the other cyber-attendees using Facebook on the home page of the symposium's website. Over 200 attendees, more than twice the number that will attend in person, from around the globe have registered to participate virtually. Countries represented include Australia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, India, Iran, Ireland, Japan, Mexico, Serbia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Tanzania, Turkey, Portugal and Venezuela.

“IBB will be showcased around the world as people beam into the seminar room to see our local symposium worldwide,” Williams said.

The ribosome is a molecular machine that is responsible for protein synthesis in all living cells. This indispensable component of life, which contains both RNA and proteins, can be viewed as a molecular fossil. That is, the comparison of ribosomal RNA and proteins from distantly related organisms suggests that the origins and evolution of protein synthesis remain imprinted in present day ribosomes, providing a “rewindable” molecular recording of early evolution that appears to go all the way back to the origin of life. Because the ribosome is central to the biochemistry of all life, it is a major target for drug development.

Each year, the Suddath Symposium theme changes, although the scientific committee selects an interdisciplinary topic that they feel Suddath would have been excited about. "A symposium focusing on the ribosome is particularly fitting, as Bud (Suddath) contributed to solving the structure of tRNA, a key substrate which is used by the ribosome to make proteins,” Oyelere explained.  Suddath’s research efforts ultimately led to a set of protein growth experiments aboard the Space Shuttle in 1988.

Georgia Tech BME students presented their "CardioScout" project done at SJTRI to the Science and Technology Committee at the Georgia State Capital. They were introduced by Georgia Tech President Bud Peterson and SJTRI Chairman Mr. Bruce Simmons.

Vaccine scientists say their "Holy Grail" is to stimulate immunity that lasts for a lifetime. Live viral vaccines such as the smallpox or yellow fever vaccines provide immune protection that lasts several decades, but despite their success, scientists have remained in the dark as to how they induce such long lasting immunity.

Researchers at Emory University and Georgia Tech have designed tiny nanoparticles that resemble viruses in size and immunological composition and induce lifelong immunity in mice. They designed the particles to mimic the immune-stimulating effects of one of the most successful vaccines ever developed — the yellow fever vaccine. The particles, made of biodegradable polymers, have components that activate two different parts of the innate immune system and can be used interchangeably with material from many different bacteria or viruses.

The results are described in this week's issue of Nature. The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
These results address a long-standing puzzle in vaccinology: how do successful vaccines induce long lasting immunity? said senior author Bali Pulendran, Charles Howard Candler professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at Emory University School of Medicine and a researcher at Yerkes National Primate Research Center.  These particles could provide an instant way to stretch scarce supplies when access to viral material is limited, such as pandemic flu or during an emerging infection. In addition, there are many diseases, such as HIV, malaria, tuberculosis and dengue, that still lack effective vaccines, where we anticipate that this type of immunity enhancer could play a role.

One injection of the live viral yellow fever vaccine, developed in the 1930s by Nobel Prize winner Max Theiler, can protect against disease-causing forms of the virus for decades. Pulendran and his colleagues in the Emory Vaccine Center have been investigating how humans respond to the yellow fever vaccine, in the hopes of imitating it.

Several years ago, they established that the yellow fever vaccine stimulated multiple Toll-like receptors (TLRs) in the innate immune system. TLRs are present in insects as well as mammals, birds and fish. They are molecules expressed by cells that can sense bits of viruses, bacteria and parasites and can activate the immune system. Pulendran's group demonstrated that the immune system sensed the yellow fever vaccine via multiple TLRs, and that this was required for the immunity induced by the vaccine.

TLRs are like the sixth sense in our bodies, because they have an exquisite capacity to sense viruses and bacteria, and convey this information to stimulate the immune response, explained Pulendran. We found that to get the best immune response, you need to hit more than one kind of Toll-like receptor. Our aim was to create a synthetic particle that accomplishes this task.
Emory postdoctoral fellow Sudhir Pai Kasturi worked with Niren Murthy, an associate professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University, to create tiny particles studded with molecules that turn on Toll-like receptors.
Given the ability of these nanoparticles to tune T and B cell responses, I anticipate they will be the focus of numerous vaccine developments in the future, said Murthy.

One of the particles components is MPL (monophosphoryl lipid A), a component of bacterial cell walls, and the other is imiquimod, a chemical that mimics the effects of viral RNA. The particles are made of PLGA — poly(lactic acid)-co-(glycolic acid) — a synthetic polymer used for biodegradable grafts and sutures.

All three components are FDA-approved for human use individually. For several decades, the only FDA-approved vaccine additive was alum, until a cervical cancer vaccine containing MPL was approved in 2009. Because of immune system differences between mice and monkeys, the scientists replaced imiquimod with the related chemical resiquimod for monkey experiments.

In mice, the particles can stimulate production of antibodies to proteins from flu virus or anthrax bacteria several orders of magnitude more effectively than alum, the authors found. In addition, the immune cells persist in lymph nodes for at least 18 months, almost the lifetime of a mouse. In experiments with monkeys, nanoparticles with viral protein could induce robust responses greater than five times the response induced by a dose of the same viral protein given by itself, without the nanoparticles.

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Writer: Quinn Eastman/Emory University

 

The Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society (TERMIS) will partner with the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience at Georgia Tech in 2013 by hosting its annual North American Conference in Atlanta.

Two members of the Petit Institute’s faculty have been designated to head the 2013 TERMIS conference. The conference chair will be Robert E. Guldberg, Ph.D., the director of the Petit Institute and professor in mechanical engineering and the program chair will be Todd McDevitt, PhD, associate professor in biomedical engineering and the director of the Stem Cell Engineering Center at Georgia Tech.

“We are honored to be selected and look forward to putting on a great meeting,” Guldberg said. TERMIS brings together an international community to promote discussion of the scientific challenges and therapeutic benefits for the development and application of the tissue engineering and regenerative medicine fields. TERMIS’ mission is to promote worldwide science and technology advancement and education in these fields. It does so through regular worldwide conferences, publishing the Tissue Engineering journal that it endorses and providing quarterly newsletters and other communications for its members.

“Bob and I are dedicated to creating a dynamic program that will honor the meetings of the past as well as introduce some new elements,” McDevitt remarked. TERMIS has been evolving over the last decade. Its roots began in 2001 as an annual workshop called “Tissue Growth Engineering” that was organized by the Pittsburgh Tissue Engineering Initiative. In 2004, this small workshop evolved into the larger, national meeting called Regenerate. In 2006, the Regenerate World Congress was held in Pittsburgh where the meeting had grown significantly and had a large international following. By the following year, the society was rebranded into TERMIS to encompass its international presence. The society has continued to grow and now has chapters in Europe and Asia. TERMIS is open to anyone engaged in research in the tissue engineering or regenerative medicine arenas.

The 2011 TERMIS North American conference was held in Houston, Texas and in 2012 the entire society will come together for the TERMIS World Congress in Vienna, Austria.

Phillip Santangelo, assistant professor in the Coulter Department, has received an R01 NIH/National Institute for General Medicine Sciences award to develop single molecule sensitive probes for the study of virus replication, assembly and budding. The $1.48 million project will focus on the human respiratory syncytial (hRSV) virus. hRSV is recognized as the most important viral agent of serious pediatric respiratory tract disease. Worldwide, acute respiratory tract disease is the leading cause of mortality due to infectious disease, and hRSV remains one of the pathogens deemed most important for vaccine and antiviral development. He will collaborate with James E. Crowe, Jr., MD, The Departments of Microbiology and Immunology, and Pediatrics and The Vanderbilt Vaccine Center; Vanderbilt University Medical Center for the 5-year study.

Atlanta (September 24, 2010) — Assistant Professor Francesca Storici (Biology) has been awarded a research grant by the National Science Foundation (NSF) for a 3 year project focusing on “Mechanisms of RNA/DNA hybrid stability and of information flow from RNA to DNA in yeast cells". The goal of this research is to understand the mechanisms by which RNA can directly transfer information to the DNA of cells. The main objectives are: 1) to identify the main protein factors cleaving the RNA tract in an RNA/DNA hybrid during RNA-driven DNA repair and DNA modification and to characterize their in vivo functions, and 2) to reveal the role of DNA repair mechanisms in the removal of RNA embedded into DNA. This project addresses challenging questions in molecular biology: How likely is information flow from RNA to DNA in cells? How well is RNA tolerated in DNA? What are the consequences of RNA-driven modifications in cells? The study will be done using newly developed systems in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which will be exploited to perform molecular and cellular biology experiments to identify and characterize the molecular mechanisms of RNA-driven DNA repair and editing.

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Francesca Storici

Georgia Tech's largest graduate student organization, Bioengineering and Bioscience Unified Graduate Students (BBUGS), with the support of the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience (IBB), hosted its annual Buzz on Biotechnology High School Open House.

Open to all Atlanta area high school students, parents and teachers, this year's event drew a record 400+ attendees from 56 different schools. Visitors came to engage in a wide variety of hands-on, innovative science and engineering demonstrations such as "Edible Cells," "Virtual Stomach Surgery," "Acids and Bases," "Electromyography Recordings of Muscles," "Protein Folding." They were able to tour the state-of-the-art laboratories of IBB such as neuroengineering, robotics, atomic force microscopy and biomedical engineering labs. Many guests also attended bioengineering and stem cell seminars and even had the opportunity to take Georgia Tech campus tours and talk with an admissions representative.

The day wrapped up with the always-popular "Egg Drop" contest to find the safest, and lightest, "egg helmet" by dropping all those constructed throughout the day from the atrium's third floor.

The open house event was created in 2003 by BBUGS to reach out to area high school students to indulge their curiosity by introducing them to the world of science and engineering in a fun and accessible way.

Essentially arrays of tiny test tubes, microplates have been used for decades to simultaneously test multiple samples for their responses to chemicals, living organisms or antibodies. Fluorescence or color changes in labels associated with compounds on the plates can signal the presence of particular proteins or gene sequences.

The researchers hope to replace these microplates with modern microelectronics technology, including disposable arrays containing thousands of electronic sensors connected to powerful signal processing circuitry. If they're successful, this new electronic biosensing platform could help realize the dream of personalized medicine by making possible real-time disease diagnosis - potentially in a physician's office - and by helping select individualized therapeutic approaches.

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Professor Greg Gibson (Biology) has received a 1 year pilot grant from the AFLAC Cancer Center for “Genomic profiling of late outcomes in survivors of childhood cancer". The study involves a collaboration with Drs. Ann Mertens and Karen Wasilewski in the Department of Hematology/Oncology at Emory University, and Dr. Ken Brigham, Director of the Center for Health Discovery and Well Being (CHDWB) at Emory. The objective of the project is to use a systems biology approach to try to understand why so many survivors of early childhood cancers begin to have a range of serious health problems as they reach adulthood, and to see if the CHDWB health care model might be an effective intervention. More information about the Emory childhood cancer survivor program can be found at http://www.choa.org/default.aspx?id=399

Professors Wendy Kelly and Jake Soper both received Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Young Faculty Awards. This program selects rising research stars from around the country and exposes them to the needs of the Department of Defense. DARPA’s goal is to fund researchers who will focus a significant portion of their careers on Department of Defense and National Security issues. Only 33 awards were made nationally in 2009, with two awarded to faculty in Georgia Tech’s School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. DARPA is funding Dr. Kelly’s research on “Biosynthetic engineering of thiopeptide antibiotics” and Dr. Soper’s research on “Redox-Active Ligand-Mediated Radical Coupling at Terminal Metal Oxo Ligands: Reactions Relevant to Water Oxidation for Artificial Photosynthesis”.