Below is a transcript of our conversation with Ashley Slaviero, CMU PhD graduate, and Professor Ute Hockgesschwender, CMU College of Medicine
David Nicholas:
I'm David Nicholas and this is Central Focus, a weekly look at research activity and innovative work from Central Michigan University students and faculty. Shining the light on the future of medicine. An inspirational idea, yes, but also the focus of Ashley Slaviero, who graduated with her. PhD in May. She has spent the last four years working with Professor Ute Hochgesschwender, CMU College of Medicine and a faculty member of the graduate programs in Neuroscience and Biochemistry, Cell and Molecular Biology. Both joined me in studio to talk about Doctor Hockgesschwender's ongoing research centered on bioluminescence and Ashley's specific project that focused on optimizing a system where light acts like a switch to turn on specific genes to make proteins…
Ashley Slaviero:
When I first came in my I kind of picked my specific project because I like the idea of doing directed molecular evolution, which is where you take protein, and you evolve them in the lab to (to) have better function. And in our case, we use these proteins to make specific tools, light-based tools that will do tasks like in that article that had mentioned using the light-based proteins to control genetic expression for things like diabetes or to control neurological activity and to treat certain things like Parkinson's or other brain diseases. So, I really like the idea of doing this evolution of these proteins that can do these tasks. So that kind of took me off on my project was (was) starting this first round of evolving my light sensitive transcription factor.
DN:
Then was there an evolution before the evolution? We direct this question to you Dr. Ute Hockgesschwender under an area of study I gather then that you have experience in and have done before. What was the foundation of the earlier research that you had done that got us to the point, similar question, that that it was then handed off to Ashley under your supervision to continue?
Ute Hockgesschwender:
Yeah. The main drive of our research is to utilize light emitting molecules found in nature with light sensing molecules also found in nature. None of these molecules are found, for example, in the human body, but we are what, we are interested in is applying the combination of light emission and light sensing in new ways ultimately for therap… therapeutic reasons in the human body. So, what we have worked on for quite a while is to use bioluminescence, so light generated by luciferases enzyme that act on a small molecule called luciferin. Using this light to drive light sensing molecules or agents that change the firing of neurons, so our applications were focused on the use of bioluminescence of the genetics in the brain. For example, in Huntington’s and in Parkinson's, in neurodevelopmental disorders to what we wanted to do is to expand not just using molecules, which influence the firing of neurons but expand the bioluminescence of more and more entities which sense light, and this is to Ashley's large credit, where she came in with a huge amount of initiative on work to apply it to such a molecule. Like a transcription factor and that allows us to expand the use of bioluminescence of the genetics and basically every cell in the body.
DN:
I don't know if it would be the causes of cancer, or the progression of the cancer? What I’m trying to (to) understand the (the) taking of the (the) genes to the proteins, to what impact then they could possibly have on a treatment.
AS:
Yeah. So, the (the) circuit that I designed, the light controlled genetic circuit that I designed, it's not going to be really used to discover anything new about different types of cancers, but it can very much be used to take information we already know about certain genes that are over activated or under activated in these cancers. And use the light to control when we can turn a replacement gene basically on and off to replace those different proteins and hopefully lead the body back to more of a healthy state by replenishing a protein that is not there in this diseased state.
DN:
Thank you to both of you for taking the time to share the progress that's been made and all the best as the work moves forward.
AS:
Thank you for having us.
UH:
Yeah. Thanks for having us here.
