Life Lines by Dr. Dolittle

Sponsored by the American Physiological Society

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Understanding cardiomyopathy through drosophila

Courtney Petersen presented her research at the 6th annual Greater Washington DC Area Physiological Society conference today. This research was conducted with Dr. Matthew Wolf at the University of Virginia School of Medicine and Dr. Jeremy Smyth at the Uniformed Services University in Bethesda, Maryland. Courtney’s research was focused on cardiomyopathy, which is a disease of the heart’s muscle that can make it harder for the heart to pump blood […]

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Researchers in Washington scheduled to talk about physiology

The Greater Washington DC Area Physiological Society will be hosting their 6th annual meeting on Monday at The George Washington University. This year’s distinguished speaker will be Dr. Nehal N. Mehta, a Lasker Clinical Research Scholar at the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Mehta’s research examines how inflammation leads to insulin resistance and the development of metabolic and cardiovascular disease. Other invited speakers include: Dr. Brian Glancy, an Earl Stadtman Investigator […]

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Importance of retaining sodium for land vertebrates

Peter Fuller from the Hudson Institute of Medical Research, gave an interesting talk this morning at the 9th Aldosterone and ENaC in Health and Disease: The Kidney and Beyond Conference. His talk focuses on the evolution of the mineralocorticoid receptor in vertebrates. For animals living on land, the receptor responds mainly to the hormone aldosterone. The receptor can also bind the stress hormone cortisol and the sex hormone progesterone, although progesterone binding inhibits the receptor. […]

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Evolving to thrive on land

Scientists Xueping Wang, Deidra M. Balchak, Clayton Gentilcore, Nathan L. Clark, and Ossama B. Kashlan from the University of Pittsburgh are presenting their research today on how sodium channels evolved as animals moved onto land at the 9th Aldosterone and ENaC in Health and Disease: The Kidney and Beyond Conference in Colorado. Sodium channels found in epithelial cells (ENaCs) are very important in regulating salt and water balance especially in the […]

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Researchers from around the world are discussing salt regulation and its role in hypertension and other diseases

The American Physiological Society is currently hosting the 9th Aldosterone and ENaC in Health and Disease: The Kidney and Beyond Conference in Estes Park, Colorado (October 2-6, 2019). The conference is geared towards researchers who are interested in epithelial sodium channels (ENaC) as well as the hormone aldosterone and their roles in kidney function and blood pressure regulation. Epithelial cells are found throughout the body (see table below) and are really important in […]

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Final 2019 Ohio Physiological Society Highlights

As you can probably tell from the prior posts, the 34th annual Ohio Physiological Society conference was a great meeting filled with exciting new developments in research. However, I would be remiss if I did not mention the outstanding students who received awards for their presentations at the conference.   Below are the 2019 Ohio Physiological Society Travel Award Winners (also pictured above). Each recipient was given $750 to attend […]

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Adapting (or not) to increasing temperatures

Birds are not the only animals experiencing massive declines in populations. Rising temperatures and heat waves, in particular, have been blamed for killing humans and animals. In fact, a new review article published in Physiology mentioned that globally, heat is “a significant natural killer of humans, with the first decade of the 21st Century seeing a 23-fold increase in human casualties from heat waves compared with the 1990s.” If current predictions hold true, […]

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