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By David J. Craig
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Jim Collins, a UNI professor and an ENG biomedical engineering professor, and Nancy Kopell, a CAS professor of mathematics and statistics, codirect BU’s Center for BioDynamics, which advances training and education in dynamical systems theory and its applications in biology and engineering. Photo by Vernon Doucette |
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Boston University has a tradition of encouraging researchers to cross
the boundaries of academic disciplines to solve problems in medicine
and biology. Its support of interdisciplinary research has led to the
development of revolutionary technologies for diagnosing and treating
diseases and in other ways improving people’s lives.
Among BU’s
most imaginative research projects are those housed at the Center for
BioDynamics (CBD), which brings together researchers
from engineering, mathematics, physics, and psychology, and at the Center
for Advanced Biotechnology (CAB), which is a hotbed of collaboration
among biology, biomedical engineering, and chemistry researchers.
The
work of CAB Director Charles Cantor, an ENG professor of biomedical engineering
and a MED professor of pharmacology, focuses on solving biological
problems that resist conventional analytic approaches. His laboratory
currently is developing highly efficient and accurate methods for DNA
sequencing that could help medical researchers link genetic defects to
specific diseases.
Similarly, Jim Collins, a UNI professor, an ENG biomedical
engineering professor, and CBD codirector, has steered several projects
that use
dynamical systems theory and other advanced forms of biology, biomedical
engineering, and mathematics to better understand how physiological systems
work and to create new clinical devices. He has developed genetic applets
that can be implanted in a patient and programmed to control cell function,
and the world’s first genetic toggle switch, which turns genes
on and off. He also has done pioneering work demonstrating that low levels
of random noise can improve balance and tactile sensations.
Touch sensitive
Collins is perhaps the perfect embodiment
of BU’s dedication to
excellence in both research and education. His profound contributions
to science recently earned him a highly prestigious MacArthur Fellowship,
popularly referred to as the “genius award.” It is given
to individuals whose work transcends traditional boundaries. Collins
also has a reputation as a dynamo in the classroom, and in 1998 he won
BU’s highest teaching honor, the Metcalf Cup and Prize.
Now he is
developing an ingenious solution to an incredibly complex problem — the tendency of elderly people to lose their balance. At the root
of the problem, Collins says, is diminished feeling in their feet, which
can result from old age, diabetes, or stroke. Because a person’s
sense of balance is guided in part by pressure information the brain
receives from the soles of the feet, Collins has developed a way to boost
the sole’s sensitivity.
The project is an extension of work Collins
has done over the past decade on how biological signals such as nerve
impulses are affected by background
noise, or unwanted signals that interfere with desired information. This
principle, called stochastic resonance, holds that adding noise to a
system actually improves the detection of weak signals in certain circumstances.
So with a team of scientists that includes biomedical engineering Ph.D.
student Attila Priplata (ENG’00,’02), Collins recently created
a vibrating gel insole that markedly steadies the equilibrium of elderly
people. Although significant engineering challenges remain to make the
insole commercially viable, Collins hopes a refined version one day will
help prevent accidental falls among the elderly, which is the leading
cause of injury-related death for people over the age of 65. For
more information about Collins’ research and the Center for BioDynamics,
visit cbd.bu.edu.
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Charles Cantor, an ENG biomedical engineering professor and a MED pharmacology professor, directs BU’s Center for Advanced Biotechnology, where his research team has developed a DNA-scanning technique that will efficiently and reliably link specific genes with the predisposition to diseases. Photo by Fred Sway |
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Genes in context
Since the Human Genome Project succeeded
in mapping the body’s
building blocks, the potential for researchers to identify the genes
associated with a predisposition to specific diseases has increased enormously.
At CAB, Charles Cantor and Chunming Ding, an ENG research assistant professor,
have developed a new DNA-scanning technique that promises to improve
diagnosis, treatment, and counseling for people at risk for genetic diseases
or disorders.
Known as M1-PCR, Cantor’s and Ding’s technology
improves upon an existing technique called haplotyping, which involves
scanning
for mutations in haplotypes, or groups of genes that cluster in a particular
area of a chromosome and tend to be inherited as a group from one parent.
Because haplotyping provides medical researchers with information on
several interrelated genes, it gives them a broad context in which to
understand disease-related genetic changes. The process is labor-intensive,
however, and can describe only relatively short lengths of DNA. In addition,
its results are difficult to interpret without prior knowledge of an
individual’s genetic profile.
But Cantor, who is one of the pioneers
of the Human Genome Project, and Ding have refined haplotyping to make
it dramatically more efficient
and accurate: M1-PCR reduces the sample size and the time needed for
analysis, increases the length of DNA that can be tested, and eliminates
the necessity for pedigree data. It achieves this by simultaneously analyzing
several small sections along a stretch of DNA, rather than the entire
region of DNA that contains the smaller areas of interest. Using a highly
automated genetic amplification and analysis system that Cantor developed
for Sequenom, Inc., of San Diego, Calif., where he is chief scientific
officer, the BU researchers were able to build accurate pictures of haplotypes
of potential disease genes along distances tenfold longer than those
described by any existing method.
The added efficiency is crucial because
for most diagnostic purposes researchers must be able to simultaneously
identify problematic areas,
which may or may not occur at the same location, on both copies of the
inherited gene associated with a particular disease or dysfunction. For
more information about Cantor’s research and the Center for Advanced
Biotechnology, visit www.bu.edu/cab.
14
November 2003
Boston University
Office of University Relations