Gersbach Team Uses Gene Editing Tools to Treat Mouse Model of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy
GCB researcher Charlie Gersbach and his team have used CRISPR to treat an adult mouse model of Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Gersbach, Fellow Chris Nelson, and colleagues collaborated with researchers at UNC-Chapel Hill, the University of Missouri School of Medicine, and the Broad Institute/Harvard to package CRISPR/Cas-9 into the virus AAV to deliver the gene editing tools into an adult mouse. The virus cut out the defective sections of the dystrophin gene from cells throughtout the mouse's body, enabling the gene to produce functional proteins.
GCB Researchers Use Biomarkers to Measure Rates of Aging in Young Adults
GCB's Avsholom Caspi and Terrie Moffitt and colleagues have identified multiple health factors that may be combined to determine whether people are aging faster or slower than their peers. Using data collected from the Dunedin Study, a longitudinal study that has followed more than 1,000 people in New Zealand from birth to the present, the authors found that study participants who were "biologically older" than their peers had exhibited signs of aging as indicated in tests such HDL cholesterol, cardiorespiratory fitness, telomere length, dental health, and other biomarkers.
GCB Research in Nature on Cell Growth Size
Lingchong You's lab has published a paper in Nature that suggests a cell will take longer to grow if it's initial size was smaller. They have found a simple linear relationship between the initial cell cell and its final size before division. This refutes recent publications suggesting that cells in the body add the same amount of mass before they divide. Fellow GCB researcher Nick Buchler and members of his lab participated in the study. Read more here.
March of Dimes Research Center to Study Premature Birth
GCB researchers Greg Crawford, Tim Reddy, and Charlie Gersbach are part of a multi-institutional collaborative effort funded by the March of Dimes Foundation to study factors that contribute to premature birth. Crawford, Reddy, Gersbach, and colleagues will study the gene regulatory elements utilized in full-term and pre-term pregnancies and characterize how stress, pregnancy relevant hormones, and genetic variation impact the function of these elements.
Duke’s iGEM Team Wins Gold in 2014
Seven Duke undergraduates worked with GCB faculty members Charles Gersbach and Nicholas Buchler to develop a synthetic molecular circuit that was awarded a coveted gold medal at the 2014 international iGEM competition featuring over 100 teams.