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SharkBytes Archives

Contact

Division of Public Relations and Marketing Communications
Nova Southeastern University
3301 College Avenue
Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33314-7796

communications@nova.edu

Collaborative Research by Farquhar College of Arts and Sciences Assistant Professor Published in Two Journals, Earns High Marks

Robert Smith, Ph.D., assistant professor at the Farquhar College of Arts and Sciences, co-authored two research articles on immune systems that appear in the academic journals GENETICS and BMC Microbiology. GENETICS editors selected Smith’s article as an April 2013 Issue Highlight, while readers accessed the article in BMC Microbiology more than 400 times in just two weeks.




 


About the GENETICS Article
Title: “Nonself Recognition Through Intermolecular Disulfide Bond Formation of Ribonucleotide Reductase in Neurospora








Robert Smith

Authors: Robert Smith, Kenji Wellman, Leila Haidari, Hirohisa Masuda, and Myron Smith


 While people most often associate immune systems with humans, such systems exist in nearly every organism, from bacteria to animals. Smith and colleagues studied a primitive immune system involved in “nonself” recognition in the filamentous fungus Neurospora crassa, in order to determine how the system functions. They discovered that this nonself recognition system relies on the tight interaction between two proteins. When the system encounters a protein it deems foreign (nonself), the system tightly complexes with the protein, causing the infected cell to die. Cell death is thought to prevent the entire fungal colony from becoming infected by sacrificing only those cells that are infected. The results in this manuscript have served to increase understanding of how nonself recognition systems operate and may have identified a novel protein inhibitor, which might have applications as an antimicrobial.


About the BMC Microbiology Article


Title: “Trans-Species Activity of a Nonself Recognition Domain”


Authors: Robert Smith, Kenji Wellman, and Myron Smith


In this follow-up study, Smith and his colleagues transferred the nonself recognition system into the closely related fungus Saccharomyces cerevisiae, more commonly known as brewer’s yeast. Here, they observed that the system could readily function in nonself recognition. Using these engineered yeast, they uncovered a novel mechanism by which the nonself recognition system may be turned off. Results from this study may point to a novel mechanism by which foreign entities such as viruses may turn off immune systems and invade cells.


Read More Online


View Smith’s article in GENETICS | April 2013 Issue
View Smith’s article in BMC Microbiology | Published Mar. 22, 2013


In October 2012, Smith’s collaborative research on the effectiveness of antibiotics published in the journal Molecular Systems Biology. Learn more about Smith’s work in this college announcement.