Straight from a Scientist Medical Research Education and Discussion Podcast Connor Wander, PhD

Alzheimer's Disease Risk and Reward
 
When they hear about my work as a neurodegeneration researcher, people always ask me about Alzheimer's disease risk factors. What really causes Alzheimer's disease?  Plaque and tangle buildup
 
The truth is there's no one secret to staving off dementia, other than living your best life.  This doesn't mean following every impulse, but rather thinking clearly about your habits and consciously making those good habits easier to access.
 
Better lucky than good, but in this case it helps to be both. The kicker is that stress is also a risk factor for Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative diseases, so you'll want to be careful about that too.  Dr. Benton has a refreshing and practical approach about all these thoughts and more.

Deep Brain Degeneration in Alzheimer’s Disease with Dr. Lea Grinberg & Research Team Losing Control from the Locus Coeruleus, starring Jonathan Chen, Felipe Pereira, and Ian Oh This episode kicks off a series all about my recent work in neurodegenerative disease, with a an emphasis on Alzheimer’s disease, a devastating and complex dementia and a major focus of my (Dr. Connor Wander’s) dissertation at UNC Chapel Hill.
And where better to start than where the first major pathological changes of tau, a disordered protein that goes dysfunctional in the brain, begins to accumulate and kill neurons.  This ground zero may be in neurons in the deep recesses of the brain act as central regulators of blood flow, inflammation, and neural network dynamics and seem particularly vulnerable to tau in those early, PRe symptomatic stages of Alzheimer’s disease.  I caught up with Dr. Lea Grinberg, Jonathan Chen, Felipe Pereira, and Ian Oh, members of her research team to define the current cutting edge in these studies.
Dr. Lea Grinberg is an Endowed Professor at UCSF with a very active research group focused on early pathological changes in Alzheimer’s disease.  Dr. Grinberg was and is a pioneer in identifying early pathological changes in AD tied to tau aggregation in the locus coeruleus, or LC.
We touched on the network modulatory function of the LC in the most recent episode with Dr. Esteban Oryarzabal. Loss of the LC and other brainstem nuclei is associated with a host of mood and sleep disorders that could be the key to understanding early Alzheimer’s disease.   Check the link below for more from Dr. Grinberg on the links between sleep, Alzheimer’s, and the loss of these brainstem nuclei.  Keep listening for great details on how these studies are conducted, and what’s next on the horizon for research into AD therapeutics and disease processes.
Full show notes at www.sfspodcast.com

This episode is about neural networks on noradrenaline- the key neuromodulator known to flip almost every switch in the brain!  Drs. Esteban Oryarzabal and Connor Wander break down how noradrenaline, or norepinephrine help regulate brain states useful for attention and task-switching.  The studies here cover a whole new way to interpret brain imaging studies, which could have huge implications for neuroscience everywhere!
Youtube link: https://youtu.be/NyMQhw5NpG4
Please note that this episode is special- it's a preview from research that hasn't fully undergone peer review.  This means that the findings discussed are still highly preliminary, and could be subject to change.  That being said, it's an incredible body of work, and fascinating at a minimum!
 
Source Paper: "Chemogenetic Stimulation of Tonic Locus Coeruleus Activity Strengthens the Default Mode Network" https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.28.463794v2
 
From https://studio.youtube.com/channel/UCbNHbknmBzRb1CQuQ2J1wFA/videos/upload?d=ud&filter=%5B%5D&sort=%7B%22columnType%22%3A%22date%22%2C%22sortOrder%22%3A%22DESCENDING%22%7D>
 
2022 Brings new season for Straight from a Scientist Podcast.  Connor has graduated from UNC Chapel Hill and is now embarking on a scientific industry career, where he explores the biology of aging.  
 
If you missed it over 2020 and 2021, check back for our Science Web Games-- Including two neuroscience games and a Coronavirus explainer: https://www.straightfromascientist.com/science-games/

 
VIDEO WITH VISUAL AIDS ON YOUTUBE!!  
How did you get so put together?  DNA is the blueprint, but it doesn't determine everything.  DNA gets turned into RNA, and then finally into proteins that help build your body and brain.  But there are SO many steps in that process that affect the final product- you.   The sum of these steps is a process called genetic regulation.  Genetic regulation makes sure that not all of our genes are expressed and turned into protein at the same time and same place- that would be a mess!
This episode is all about genetic regulation by long, non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs, pronounced "link-R N A").  LncRNAs are long segments of RNA that serve non-traditional functions in the genome.  Although recently discovered, lncRNAs seem to be involved in everything from the genetic regulation of development to diseases like cancer.  LncRNAs could help rewrite the field of genetic regulation, and might be the biggest shift to understanding genetics since epigenetics became a hot topic.
https://www.straightfromascientist.com/rachel-cherney/
Rachel is also highly involved in other forms of science communication!  Check out the Pipettepen and UNC SWAC for more info!  If you're at UNC, make sure to check TIBBS for career training and opportunities.
  
Specific visual references and their approximate timestamps are listed below.  Make sure to watch the Youtube Video for the full experience!
5:00: DNA vs RNA vs Protein - (image in video) 7:30: Alternative splicing - (image in video) 9:00: Jimena giudice lab at UNC  - http://giudicelab.web.unc.edu/ (Alternative splicing and intracellular trafficking in development and diseases) 9:30: It's estimated that >90% of proteins undergo alternative splicing 13:30: protein coding gene structure (image in video) 15:30: Additional note:  smaller ncRNAs have more defined structure than lncRNAs, their functions are better known 17:33: dosage compensation - calico cats (image in video) 20:50: An example of a motif that proteins recognize (http://www.rnajournal.org/cgi/pmidlookup?view=long&pmid=31097619, figure 3 ) 21:00: xist repeat structure (https://www.mdpi.com/2311-553X/4/4/28/htm, figure 2, human vs mouse xist) 23:00:in cis lncRNA function (https://dev.biologists.org/content/143/21/3882, figure 2 b and c) 25:05: Markers are placed on histones, rather than DNA. Histones are proteins that DNA wraps around to compact dna into cells (image in video) 25:30: A note: polycomb complexes are conserved to plants and even fungi.  lncRNAs can be found in plants* 28:15: immunoprecipitation pipeline (image in video) 31:30 -33:35: Examples of Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) (image in video) 35:00: Enhancer rnas (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1672022917300761 figure 1 38:30: single line RNA vs double line DNA, 3DRNA structure (image in video) 41:00: xist vs rsx  (http://www.rnajournal.org/cgi/pmidlookup?view=long&pmid=31097619, figure 6b ) 42:30: SWAC /pipettepen,com - link to swac article that prompted this podcast -http://www.thepipettepen.com/what-determines-our-complexity/ 44:30: TIBBS -https://tibbs.unc.edu/

Marijuana and other cannabis products are becoming increasingly available across the country, and while compounds like CBD have been shown to be safe and even helpful in adults, the side effects of cannabis products are relatively unknown when it comes to the developing fetus.
We've known that alcohol causes birth defects for over 40 years, causing a condition called Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) and the greater spectrum of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD).   But alcohol isn't the only commonly used substance to cause birth defects.   Dr. Parnell's lab and others shows that CBD and THC, the two most well-studied compounds in marijuana can also be harmful to the developing brain.  His research points to a possible fetal cannabis syndrome that could have very similar effects to alcohol.  It seems that both alcohol and mariujana could hit the developing brain at the same stage- but listen in for the details!
 
Neurulation in embryonic development[/caption]
Here's the main publication we discussed.
UNC broke this story late last year here.

This week's episode is about the big things in life- specifically, supermassive black holes in dwarf galaxies!  Connor Wander sits down with Mugdha Polimera from UNC to talk about her work studying supermassive black holes and how their frequency in dwarf (smaller) galaxies can teach us about the formation of the universe.  She quite literally looks back in time!
Mugdha explains how she studies such huge elements so far away, what her studies could mean for our understanding of the universe,  reviews her journey to be an astrophysicist, comments on some popular science myths, and more!  Her research could hold the secrets to how our own galaxy, the milky way, formed eons ago.
https://www.straightfromascientist.com/mugdha-polimera-unc
Here's a great reference for scale, so you can see just how big some of these things are!
Supermassive black hole to scale with giant stars[/caption]
https://neal.fun/size-of-space/
 
Questions about supermassive black holes or dwarf galaxies?  Visit Mugdha's bio to ask about them!