School Notes: School of Medicine
March/April 2010

Researcher honored for work in innate immunity

Ruslan Medzhitov, David W. Wallace Professor of Immunobiology and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, has been awarded the 2010 Lewis S. Rosenstiel Award for Distinguished Work in Basic Medical Science, for his “elucidation of the mechanisms of innate immunity,” according to the Rosenstiel Center at Brandeis University. Medzhitov’s studies helped shed light on the critical role of toll-like receptors (TLRs) in sensing microbial infections, mechanisms of TLR signaling, and activation of the inflammatory and immune response. “Recent discoveries of TLRs and other pattern recognition receptors uncovered the key pathways that control immune responses,” Medzhitov said. “Targeting these receptors should help to manipulate the immune system with vaccines and other interventions.” Sharing the award for his work in innate immunity is Jules Hoffman, research director and member of the board of administrators of the National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS), University Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg, France.

Images help scientists think outside the box

Cell structures known as box C/D guide ribonucleoproteins (RNPs) help to maintain the integrity of ribosomes, which synthesize proteins in all forms of life on Earth. A team in the lab of Susan Baserga ’80, ’88MD/PhD, professor of molecular biophysics and biochemistry, used electron microscopy to discern the structure of the box C/D RNP in Methanocaldococcus jannaschii, a hardy microbe found in Antarctic ice and in boiling vents on the ocean floor. Conventional models had proposed that box C/D RNPs are composed of one RNA molecule and pairs of core proteins. But as reported in the September 11 edition of Science, first author Franziska Bleichert and the Yale group found that the M. jannaschii box C/D RNP was instead made up of two RNAs and four copies of each of the three core proteins. “It looks like a Wheat Thin with feet,” says Baserga, professor of molecular biophysics and biochemistry. “When you can discern structure, you can often figure out function.”

Expert on severe mental illness is new director of mental health center

Michael Sernyak, professor of psychiatry and a nationally recognized health services researcher, has been appointed director of the Connecticut Mental Health Center (CMHC), a partnership between Yale and the state of Connecticut’s Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (DMHAS) that was established in 1966. The CMHC, an urban community mental health center that provides outpatient psychiatric services for over 7,000 New Haven–area residents each year, is housed with the Abraham Ribicoff Research Facilities, laboratories that have furthered our understanding and treatment of mental illnesses including schizophrenia, depression, and drug and alcohol addiction.