Little things that can make a big difference -- Interview with Jane Freedman and Kahraman Tanriverdi about detecting small RNAs in blood!

RNA molecules - most of us might know them as middle men between the biological information storage unit: DNA, and the functional unit: protein. But a large numbers of small sized RNAs are important players in regulating genetic networks. These small RNAs, like micro-RNA, are capable of regulating a vast numbers of genes. These small RNAs are involved in almost every biological aspect, from development to disease. Wouldn't it be interesting to sense their presence to predict developmental or disease trajectories.

Now, Jane, Kahraman and their colleagues develop a sensitive assay capable of detecting and quantifying small RNAs in human blood samples. They use their technique to probe small RNAs presence in human blood samples and to detect their diversity among various groups. Their findings show a great deal of diversity in small RNAs presence, whose role would be most interesting to elucidate. To know more about the study, please listen to their interview:


To know more about the study, please refer to:
Diverse human extracellular RNAs are widely detected in human plasma
Freedman et al., Nature Communications, 2016.

How is more important than What! -- Interview with Jonathan Coloff about Glutamate usage during function vs. proliferation!!

Cells perform their function: like heart muscle makes the heart beat or beta-cells maintain blood glucose by secreting insulin. This demands energy and resources to accomplish that. Many times, the same cells need to increase their numbers to meet the body's every changing demands. Like beta-cells multiple in cases of obesity. Cell division is also an energetically costly process. It has to make two of almost everything: two sets of DNA, two times the mitochrondria, before dividing into two. How does the cell balance the resources between its function and cell division processes?? 

Jonathan Coloff and colleagues asked the same and found that the answer does not lie in different starting material, but how the raw materials are processed. A cell's carbon demands can be satisfied by glucose, but nitrogen comes mostly from glutamate; which helps build nuclei acids, proteins and other machinery. Quiescent cells performing normal function process glutamate to ammonia vs. proliferative cells that would make non-essential amino acids from it. This difference in processing describes the switch between the two cellular states. To learn more about the switch, please listen to Jon.

To know more about the study, please refer to:

Differential Glutamate Metabolism in Proliferating and Quiescent Mammary Epithelial Cells
Jonathan L. Coloff et al., Cell Metabolism. May 2016.

Immunological Curate's Egg -- Interview with Chong Luo about defining the line between tumor elimination and autoimmunity.

Immune cells in our body not only function to ward off infections, but also eliminate unfit, and possibly cancerous cells. For this, T cells, a part of our adaptive immune response, recognize the harmful cells within the body and kill them. But sometimes they can get confused, and are unable to distinguish between harmful and normal cells. In this case, they start attacking functional organs, leading to auto-immune disorder. What helps them maintain the capacity to successfully make such distinctions??

Chong Luo and her colleagues probed this query and found that a transcription factor, Foxo1, helps define this fine line. Foxo1 expression level decreases in a certain class of Treg cells during their fight with tumor cells. However, continued expression of Foxo1 in such Treg cells impairs the response and shifts it towards autoimmunity. To understand such regulation, please listen to in to an interview with Chong.


To know more about the work, please read:
Graded Foxo1 activity in Treg cells differentiates tumour immunity from spontaneous autoimmunity
Luo et al., Nature, 2016.