Friday, February 14, 2025

Celebrating Valentine's Day and science

Emory biophysicists Jennifer Rieser and Gordon Berman enjoy a hike in Aspen following a summer conference.

Jennifer Rieser, assistant professor of physics, and Gordon Berman, associate professor of biology, connected at Cornell University in 2006. They are fascinated by the biophysics of animal behaviors, tackling esoteric questions such as variations in how organisms move. 

“We both noticed each other,” Berman recalls of their first meeting. Berman was already working on his PhD, studying the biodynamics of insect flight, when Rieser attended a recruitment weekend for graduate students. 

“I reached out to him afterwards to learn more about what it’s like at Cornell,” Rieser says. 

Berman didn’t discourage her. She was enrolled that fall, and, by Christmas, Berman informed his mother he had a girlfriend. 

They married in 2010. Their eventual move to Atlanta was a homecoming for Rieser, who grew up in nearby Lawrenceville, while Berman is from Michigan. 

During the COVID-19 lockdown they shared a Midtown loft, teaching online on opposite sides of the space, sometimes simultaneously. “And we didn’t get tired of each other,” Berman says. “We survived that test.” 

They now live just a few blocks from campus with daughter, Naomi, who is two-and-a-half, and dogs Escher and Kona. 

Berman focuses more on theoretical and computational methods, while Rieser takes an experimental approach to the locomotion of everything from snakes to ants. They often run their research by one another to get feedback from their complementary strengths. 

They manage to combine work and play, traveling together following conferences or summer teaching gigs that took them to Brazil, Italy and Germany. And they enjoy cooking and eating nice meals. 

“I tend to bake things,” Rieser says. 

“She’s more a creature of precision,” Berman explains. “Her signature dish is a chocolate babka, a very decadent bread.” 

"He’s more of an improvisational chef,” Rieser says. 

“Give me a cabinet of ingredients and a couple of adjectives,” Berman says, “and I can make you a bespoke, likely unrepeatable cocktail.”

Tuesday, February 11, 2025

Plant extract inspires new chemistry and new early lead against triple-negative breast cancer

The extract that inspired the research comes from Curcuma phaeocaulis is a flowering plant in the ginger family. (Wagner Campelo / Alamy Stock Photo)

Chemists at Emory University invented a reaction to streamline the total synthesis of a compound, phaeocaulisin A, extracted from a plant used for centuries in traditional Chinese medicine. 

In laboratory dish experiments conducted with biologists at Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University, the researchers showed the compound’s efficacy against HER2-positive breast cancer cells and triple-negative breast cancer cells. An analogue of the compound the chemists constructed boosted this efficacy. 

“We not only efficiently replicated a complex natural product,” says Mingji Dai, Emory professor of chemistry. “We also improved upon it by turning it into a more potent compound.” 

The Journal of the American Chemical Society published the work, led by Dai and Yong Wan, professor of pharmacology and chemical biology at Emory School of Medicine and director of basic research for the Glenn Family Breast Center at Winship Cancer Institute.


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Tuesday, January 7, 2025

Bittersweet secrets of the fruit fly brain

Fruit flies have served as an important laboratory organism for more than 100 years. (Sanjay Archaya/Wikipedia)

The sense of taste carries evolutionary benefits key to survival. A sweet taste, for instance, signals energy-dense nutrients important to animals foraging for food — including humans. A bitter taste may warn of a toxic substance. 

“We use our sense of taste to decide what to eat and how much to eat,” says Anita Devineni, a neuroscientist and assistant professor in Emory University’s Department of Biology. 

Despite the importance of taste, little is known about how taste cues spark the firing of cells across a brain and evoke a variety of behavioral responses. Devineni is exploring this mystery by mapping the neural circuitry for the taste system of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster

Tinier than a poppy seed, the fruit fly brain contains around 140,000 neurons. 

“That’s 1,000 fewer neurons than a mouse brain and a million times fewer than a human brain,” Devineni explains, making the fly brain a simple starting point for studying general mechanistic principles of cognition. 

Compared to the incredible complexity of its cognitive powers, the human brain’s basic biology appears relatively straightforward. 

“The brain is just an organ like any other organ in your body,” Devineni says. “It’s made up of neurons that are cells like any other cells — lipid membranes containing proteins, DNA and other molecules. What makes a brain cell different from a skin cell or a lung cell is that a brain cell fires. Firing means that sodium ions flow in and out of the cell. Everything that you do, from thinking to talking to walking, is a result of patterns of neurons firing. How could this be?”


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