News

Every day, the DNA of living organisms is exposed to damage from normal cellular processes, environmental toxins, and even some medicines. Among the most dangerous forms of damage are interstrand DNA crosslinks (ICLs), chemical bonds that effectively staple the two strands of DNA together and prevent cells from reading, copying,… Read More

Green Team members left to right: Borden Lacy, Georgia Caso, Karen Davis, Gabrielle Fortier, Lily Van Ye, Sam Insignares (photo by Chelsea Hamilton) For most labs, lunch is the most sacred part of the day—a time to fuel up after a long morning of experiments, rant about the latest failed… Read More

The use of computational tools to provide a clinical diagnosis of genetic variants of unknown significance (VUSs) of rare diseases, in which the diagnosis is mainly informed by gene-phenotype association databases and DNA scoring methods, has been limited. Tools such as GERP, SIFT, and Polyphen have been shown to differentiate… Read More

Alex Waterson, PhD, Research Professor, Pharmacology and ChemistryFesik Lab Targeted protein degradation (TPD) represents an emerging class of therapeutics that selectively degrades disease-relevant proteins. For example, targeted degradation of oncoproteins in a tumor can inhibit tumor growth while minimizing the toxic side effects of traditional chemotherapy. The degradation relies… Read More

Martin Egli, the Richard N. Armstrong, Ph.D. Professor of Innovation in Biochemistry and a professor of biochemistry, delivered the Kairos Lecture on May 28. His scientific accomplishments have resulted in over 300 publications and two influential nucleic acid textbooks, and he has received major honors and extensively served… Read More

Brandt Eichman, PhD Congratulations to William R. Kenan, Jr. Chair, Professor of Biological Sciences and CSB researcher Brandt Eichman on being the first Vanderbilt faculty member to be awarded the prestigious Royal Society Wolfson Visiting Fellowship. The fellowship, jointly funded by the the… Read More

Douglas Mitchell, Biochemistry A new study from the Mitchell Lab reveals that even the ribosome, one of the most intensively studied molecular machines in biology, still holds hidden surprises. They have uncovered a previously undetected chemical modification in a key ribosomal protein, uL16, in which a single… Read More

PROteolysis TArgeting Chimeras, known as PROTACs, are a recently developed group of therapeutics that utilize the ubiquitin-proteasome system to target and degrade disease associated proteins by recruiting E3 ligase. Of the many different E3 ligases found in human cells, over 600 are known to be expressed and only a few… Read More

Clostridioides difficile (C. diff) is the leading cause of health care– and antibiotic–associated infection. It causes diarrhea and colitis (inflammation of the colon) and nearly half a million C. diff infections in the U.S. each year and about 29,000 deaths, resulting in an estimated $4.8 billion in health care costs. Read More

Long QT syndrome (LQTS) is a hereditary or acquired cardiac disorder that affects the electrical system of the heart, which causes a delay in the heart’s repolarization or reset time. This delay means the heart takes longer to reset between beats. LQTS is a fatal disorder linked to syncope, arrhythmia,… Read More