Three researchers at the Johns Hopkins University
School of Medicine have been named early
career scientists by the
Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Xinzhong Dong, Joshua
Mendell and Sinisa
Urban will remain faculty at Johns Hopkins but also become
employees of HHMI, which will provide
research funding and salary for the next six years.
Xinzhong Dong
|
"We are thrilled for Xinzhong, Josh and Sin for being
recognized by Hughes for the quality of
their work," said Chi V. Dang, vice dean for research at
the School of Medicine. "At the same time,
this is an honor for all of Johns Hopkins, to have not only
one but three young investigators selected."
According to HHMI, the award is given to recognize
"the nation's best biomedical scientists at a
critical early stage of their faculty careers, and to
provide them with flexible funding to develop
scientific programs of exceptional merit."
Dong, an assistant professor of
neuroscience and a member of Johns Hopkins'
Institute
of Basic Biomedical Sciences Center for Sensory
Biology, has been at the university since 2004. His team is
taking a multidisciplinary approach to understanding the
mechanisms behind sensation, including pain,
itch and touch. All three so-called somatosensations are
controlled by nerves in the dorsal root
ganglia, a bundle of nerves that carries information
through the spinal cord into the brain. To do its
research, the team has developed molecular tools to examine
nerve cell circuitry and communication.
The researchers would like to learn which nerve cells
mediate which sensation, how these nerve cells
relay information to other cells and which proteins within
these cells actually sense an itch or gentle
touch.
Joshua Mendell
|
Mendell has been an assistant professor of pediatrics and
a member of Johns Hopkins'
McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine since
2004. His team studies microRNAs, how they
function and how they are controlled in normal cells and
under disease conditions. MicroRNAs — small
RNA molecules that affect the stability of messages and the
amount of proteins made by genes — can
control many aspects of development and cell function and
often are altered in diseases such as
cancer. Mendell's team was one of the first to identify
microRNAs that are involved in cancer-promoting molecular
pathways. In addition to its work on cancer, the team also
studies how microRNAs
are controlled within a cell and how that control is lost
in disease states.
Sinisa Urban
|
Urban has been an assistant professor of molecular biology and
genetics since 2006. His team
studies enzymes called rhomboid proteases that are found in
a cell's membrane. Urban discovered that
rhomboid proteases catalyze a biochemical reaction that
cuts proteins. His research team aims to
understand the biochemical principles governing how
catalysis occurs embedded within the membrane,
a process that is a new frontier in biochemistry. The
scientists also focus on how deadly pathogens
such as malaria and related parasites use rhomboid
proteases to infect human cells, and how parasitic
amebas use rhomboids to evade the immune system. Uniting
these studies may lead to new drug
development because targeting rhomboid enzymes with
inhibitors may be an effective way to treat
multiple infectious diseases.
GO TO