2019 Russo Family Awards
The Russo Family Award has been made possible by a generous endowed gift from the Russo Family Charitable Foundation to Tufts University School of Medicine. The award provides funding for new collaborative projects from faculty at Tufts School of Medicine. This year’s awardees are:
Aimee Shen and Bree Aldridge: Developing Time-lapse Microscopy Methods for Studying Clostridioides difficile Physiology
This project will develop models for studying the growth dynamics of the important human pathogen, Clostridioides difficile, using state-of-the-art microscopy techniques. Studying the growth and physiology of C. difficile at the single-cell level has been limited by the fact that it has been difficult to use standard tools due to C. difficile's inability to tolerate oxygen. This proposal combines the expertise of the Shen laboratory in the study of C. difficile physiology with the expertise of the Aldridge lab in microscopy and computational biology to advance our understanding of how this pathogen modulates its growth in response to stressful conditions.
Claire Moore and Sasha Poltorak: Role of alternative polyadenylation in the differentiation of monocytes to macrophages
This project will investigate how alternative polyadenylation contributes to differentiation of monocytes to macrophages, with the long-range goal of determining how this might be manipulated therapeutically to promote differentiation into specific types of macrophages. This project utilizes the expertise of the Moore lab in yeast polyadenylation and the Poltorak lab in macrophage biology to understand how important changes in macrophages are mediated.
Malavika Raman and Peter Juo: Identification of novel and conserved genes involved in p97/cdc-48-mediated protein misfolding and aggregation
The p97 ATPase is a major regulator of ubiquitin-dependent degradation and protein quality control. Mutations in p97 are associated with increased protein aggregation and neurodegeneration, however regulators that specifically control the capacity of p97 to prevent protein aggregation are not known. This project combines the expertise of the Raman lab in p97 biology with that of the Juo lab in genetic RNA interference screens in C. elegans to identify new and conserved regulators of p97 that will suppress protein aggregation.
Larry Feig and Mary Wallingford: Maternal Transmission of the Effects of Stress Across Generations Through Gene Expression Changes in Early Embryos
This proposal seeks to explain how the negative consequences of female exposure to stress can be transmitted to offspring via epigenetic alterations of germ cells and/or early embryonic tissues, with a focus on placenta. This proposal synergizes the expertise of the Feig lab in understanding the mechanisms of transgenerational transmission of environmentally induced changes through epigenetic alterations in sperm with that of the Wallingford lab in mammalian embryonic development, placental biology, and maternal-fetal animal models.