Hands-on science and medicine lessons for high schoolers

Ray Marklin
(From left) Gregory Bryant, a first-year medical student, works with Khoa Nguyen, Idara Umana, Dorie Umana and Iqra Said, all students at Soldan High School, Feb. 19 as part of the Health Professionals Recruitment and Enrichment Program offered by the School of Medicine’s Student National Medical Association (SNMA). The SNMA is an independent, student-run organization focused on the needs and concerns of medical students of color. School of Medicine members of SNMA have made six educational outreach trips to area schools so far in 2010, and six more are planned. The goals are to expose underserved students to medicine and science, to connect students to summer opportunities where they can further explore science, and to provide role models in science to at-risk youth. The medical students teach a heart lesson and a lung lesson. Each lesson consists of five rotation stations where students get to touch and feel real human organs as well as listen to their heart sounds, take blood pressures and experience what it feels like for someone to breathe with asthma or emphysema.

Scientists find ideal target for malaria therapy

Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified a protein made by the malaria parasite that is essential to its ability to take over human red blood cells.

Malaria, which is spread by mosquito bites, kills between 1 million and 3 million people annually in Third World countries. Death results from damage to red blood cells and clogging of the capillaries that feed the brain and other organs.

"The malaria parasite seizes control of and remodels the red blood cell by secreting hundreds of proteins once it's inside," says Dan Goldberg, M.D., Ph.D., professor of medicine and of molecular microbiology and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. "But without this protein, plasmepsin V, those other proteins can't get out of the parasite into the blood cell, and the infectious process stops."

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Knitting for a Cause

A knitting club comprising about 30 School of Medicine faculty and staff meets weekly to knit hats for premature babies at St. Louis Children’s Hospital and for cancer patients at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. The club meets every Tuesday at noon in Room 212 of the Farrell Learning and Teaching Center. Included in the group Feb. 16 were (from left) Mary Bradley, director of postgraduate affairs in the Division of Biology and Biomedical Sciences; Val Rutterer, director of admissions and administration in medical school student affairs; Anita Albright, secretary III in facilities management; Amy Meyer, director of the Farrell Learning and Teaching Center; Marnice Daniels, executive secretary in medical school student affairs; and Lisa Stringfellow with Allied Barton Security Services.

Chickens 'one-up' humans in ability to see color

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have peered deep into the eye of the chicken and found a masterpiece of biological design.

Scientists mapped five types of light receptors in the chicken's eye. They discovered the receptors were laid out in interwoven mosaics that maximized the chicken's ability to see many colors in any given part of the retina, the light-sensing structure at the back of the eye.

"Based on this analysis, birds have clearly one-upped us in several ways in terms of color vision," says Joseph C. Corbo, M.D., Ph.D., senior author and assistant professor of pathology and immunology and of genetics. "Color receptor organization in the chicken retina greatly exceeds that seen in most other retinas and certainly that in most mammalian retinas."

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Moss helps chart the conquest of land by plants

David Cove
The moss Physcomitrella patens often is used as a model organism for water stress studies

Recent work at Washington University in St. Louis sheds light on one of the most important events in earth history, the conquest of land by plants 480 million years ago.

No would-be colonizer could have survived on dry land without the ability to deal with dehydration, a major threat for organisms accustomed to soaking in water.

Clues to how the first land plants managed to avoid drying out might be provided by bryophytes, a group that includes the mosses, many of which retain remarkable drought tolerance. Some mosses can become so dry they crumble in the hand, but, if remoistened, will begin making proteins within minutes.

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Researchers move into BJC Institute of Health at Washington University

Jean Schaffer, M.D. (left), the Virginia Minnich Distinguished Professor of Medicine and director of the Diabetic Cardiovascular Disease Center (DCDC), and Daniel Ory, M.D., professor of medicine and of cell biology and physiology and co-director of the DCDC, unpack equipment Jan. 28 in the Diabetic Cardiovascular Disease Center’s new lab space in the BJC Institute of Health at Washington University. Helping them are (from left) Ben Scruggs, a fourth-year doctoral student in the Division of Biology and Biomedical Sciences; and Sarah Gale, senior research technician.

After two years of eager anticipation, the first occupants of the BJC Institute of Health at Washington University began moving in last week.

The 11-story BJC Institute of Health is now the hub for WUSTL's BioMed 21 initiative to speed scientific discovery and rapidly apply breakthroughs to patient care. BJC HealthCare supported construction of the building with a $30 million gift over five years.

Research teams from the Diabetic Cardiovascular Disease Center and the Center for Women’s Infectious Disease Research moved into space on the 10th floor the week of Jan. 25.

Over the first three weeks of February, six faculty members from the Department of Pathology and Immunology will move into the eighth floor. Research teams from the Hope Center Program on Protein Aggregation and Neurodegeneration will move into ninth floor space during the last week of February.

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