Welcome to Our Blog
Thank you for visiting our website. We are a relatively small lab with big ideas. We are part of a much larger group of investigators known collectively as the LLUMC Molecular Radiation Biology Laboratories. It is our hope that this website will educate, communicate, and incite scientific debate. As the PI of our little group, I hope to post our data and discuss potential mechanisms, consequences, and countermeasures. With a bit of luck we'll all learn something. The links to the left include our merry band as well as collaborating investigators and laboratories. The links to the right include our archive and blogroll. The banner above will always bring you back to the main page page. Take a look around and please feel free to leave a comment on our blog (try to keep it civil and constructive) or shoot us an e-mail. - Michael " Ubertramp " Pecaut
Write up of the 12th Annual Basic Sciences Research Symposium
Posted by: Ubertramp on 2009.12.15
Categories & Tags: Props
Comments: None
The research symposium I chaired a couple of months ago was written up in the school newspaper, “Today.” This year, the focus was on Radiation Medicine and Radiobiology. A copy of the article can be found here. We’re on page 2 under the heading “Musical Milestone.” I’m not sure why. Maybe we were considered a musical comedy act.
Novemeber 2009 Lab Update
Posted by: Ubertramp on 2009.11.16
Categories & Tags: Props,Recognition
Comments: None
It’s been three months since my last update and I guess it’s about time. Believe it or not, we’ve had another publication show up in PubMed in the interim. It’s another manuscript about the STS-118 flight (our 4th from this flight, I think), but this time it’s geared more toward immunohistology than our usual cell count stuff. Jack Tian did all of the work. Here is the abstract.
Tian J, Pecaut MJ, Slater JM, Gridley DS.
NASA has reported pulmonary abnormalities in astronauts on space missions, but the molecular changes in lung tissue remain unknown. The goal of the present study was to explore the effects of spaceflight on expression of extracellular matrix (ECM), cell adhesion and pro-fibrotic molecules in lungs of mice flown on Space Shuttle Endeavour (STS-118). C57BL/6Ntac mice housed in animal enclosure modules during a 13-day mission in space (FLT) were euthanized within hours after return; ground controls were treated similarly for comparison (GRD). Analysis of genes associated with ECM and adhesion molecules was performed according to quantitative RT-PCR. The data revealed that FLT lung samples had statistically significant transcriptional changes, i.e., at least 1.5-fold, in 25 out of 84 examined genes (P < 0.05); 15 genes were up-regulated and 10 were down-regulated. The genes that were up-regulated by more than 2-fold were Ctgf, Mmp2, Ncam1, Sparc, Spock1, and Timp3, whereas the most down-regulated genes were Lama1, Mmp3, Mmp7, vcam-1, and Sele. Histology showed profibrosis-like changes occurred in FLT mice, more abundant collagen accumulation around blood vessels, and thicker walls compared with lung samples form GRD mice. Immunohistochemistry was used to compare expression of six selected proteins associated with fibrosis. Immunoreactivity of four proteins (MMP-2, CTGF, TGF-beta1, and NCAM) was enhanced by spaceflight, whereas, no difference was detected in expression of MMP-7 and MMP-9 proteins between the FLT and GRD groups. Taken together, the data demonstrate that significant changes can be readily detected shortly after return from spaceflight in the expression of factors that can adversely influence lung function. Key words: space shuttle, respiratory tract, gene expression, histopathology. Read More..
Woot! Another Publication in PubMed!
Posted by: Ubertramp on 2008.07.30
Categories & Tags: Brookhaven National Laboratory,Clemson,High-Energy Iron Radiation,Immunity,NASA,New Publication,Props,Rats
Comments: None
Yeay! We have another publication in PubMed. Its our fourth so far this year. And we’re expecting at least two more soon. We’re also about to send out 4 more to reviewers, too. This is a banner year for us in terms of publications. Woot! These animals were irradiated at the Brookhaven National Laboratory and the work was funded through NASA and LLU’s Radiation Medicine Department. We also collaborated with Clemson on this one. The bone paper from these animals has already been published.
Here’s the abstract.
Long-term changes in rat hematopoietic and other physiological systems after high-energy iron ion irradiation.
Gridley DS, Obenaus A, Bateman TA, Pecaut MJ.
Departments of Radiation Medicine.
Purpose: To assess the long-term consequences of high-linear energy transfer (LET) iron ion radiation on immune and other critical body systems in the context of assessing potential effects astronauts may experience during exploratory missions. Materials and methods: Sprague-Dawley rats were nearly whole-body irradiated with 56-Fe (5 GeV/n) to total doses of 0, 1, 2, and 4 Gray (Gy) and euthanized 9 months post-exposure for analyses. Results: Irradiated groups consistently had low body mass. Numbers of circulating white blood cells (WBC), lymphocytes and monocytes were lower in the 2 Gy group compared to 0 Gy (p < 0.05); a trend for low granulocytes was also noted. Red blood cell counts, hemoglobin, and hematocrit were decreased in irradiated animals (p < 0.05), whereas platelet counts and volume were unaffected. In the spleen, WBC counts and DNA synthesis by T cells were similar among groups and there were no differences in secreted interferon-gamma and interleukin-6. However, trends were noted for increased splenocyte capacity to secrete tumor necrosis factor-alpha and increased level of vascular endothelial cell growth factor in plasma. One or more of the irradiated groups had significant (p < 0.05) aberrations in several blood chemistry parameters associated with liver and kidney function. Conclusion: The data show that exposure to 56-Fe radiation induced pathological changes in important body systems long after exposure.
It’s a good day to start a blog…
Posted by: Ubertramp on 2008.05.24
Categories & Tags: Current Events,Introduction,Props
Comments: None
Hello everyone. This is my first real entry to this blog. I’m hoping for good things with this, but we’ll see how it goes. It will quickly become obvious that I’m a relative newbie. Anyway. A quick look around the site and you’ll see that we have a lot going on.
On May 27, Farnaz will be representing out lab at the annual meeting of the Psychoneuroimmunology Research Society (PNIRS) in Madison, WI. Farnaz will be presenting a poster describing some of our results from a recent space shuttle experiment (STS-118). She’s pretty excited about going as this will be the first time we have presented this work to an international audience. We’ve already presented some of it locally, at
When she returns, we’re hoping to run our latest set of experiments for her dissertation work. These will involve the effects of proton radiation on CNS-Immune communication and phagocytic function. She is focusing on sympathetic nervous system pathways with an emphasis on the local microenvironment in the spleen. She will characterize cFOS expression in the hypothalamus, beta-adrenergic receptor and cAMP expression in splenocytes (both macrophages and T cells) and, finally, circulating catecholamine and inflammatory cytokine expression. This is on top of scheduling beam time and getting all of us organized. I don’t think she realizes yet how much work she has ahead of her, but she’ll find out soon enough. Hehehe.
This summer, we will continue our low-dose/low-dose-rate experiments. And, more than likely, continue our running debate about hormesis. There is a growing body of evidence which seems to suggest that very low doses of radiation are actually protective, in terms of the likelihood of cancer induction after a subsequent exposure to a higher dose of radiation. This is probably because low doses of radiation increase reactive oxygen species (ROS) and anti-oxidant expression. However, I’m still not so sure this is a good thing for anything other than immune surveillance for malignancies. I believe this hormetic response has a “dark side.” Namely, the increase in ROS will also result in an increase in anti-inflammatory responses. This, in turn, will result in a decrease in the ability to respond to an immune challenge from an external source, such as bacteria.
Well that’s it for now. Hope this is of interest to some of you and look forward to hearing from everyone as we go.
