蜜桃传媒

BUFFALO, N.Y. – A team of scientists will study if zebrafish, a popular aquarium fish whose genetic and physiological makeup is similar to humans, could unlock new treatments for kidney stones and gout.

The tiny fish, named for its horizontal blue stripes, has long been used to study possible treatments for cancer, cardiovascular disease, infectious diseases and more.

Now, after receiving a $1.2 million grant from the (HFSP), a team of researchers that includes 蜜桃传媒 computational biophysicist Viviana Monje will examine how zebrafish produce a crystal to adjust their skin pigmentation.

“Our goal is to uncover how the crystallization process in zebrafish occurs,” says Monje, PhD, an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering.

The team will focus on an essential, but unexplored structure: the lipid membrane that encloses each crystal inside a cell.

This information, Monje says, could lead to new treatments to diseases where abnormal crystallization is a hallmark, such as kidney stones and gout.

Her collaborators include , PhD, group leader and Ikerbasque research fellow at the 蜜桃传媒 of the Basque Country, Spain, and , PhD, research group leader at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Germany.

Based in France, HFSP is an international organization that promotes collaboration for research focused on the complex mechanisms of living organisms. The three-year, $1.2 million award — for their project, “” — comes from HFSP’s prestigious Early Career Grant program. Each investigator will each receive $400,000.

According to Monje, each researcher brings unique strengths to the study and could not tackle the question alone.

Monje’s focuses on molecular modeling of cell membranes. Specifically, she and members of her lab examine how biomolecules — such as proteins or drugs — interact with lipids in cell membranes. In this project, Monje will utilize her expertise in lipid membranes and molecular dynamics simulations to study the role of cell membrane lipids in crystal formation.

“We will leverage resources at the Center for Computational Research, UB’s leading high performance computing cluster facility, to study the specific interactions and role of lipid molecules on crystal formation at atomistic levels. Specifically, how their chemical nature and ratio affect the crystal lattice, size and shape,” she says.

The researchers hope to fully understand the iridosome — an organelle that produces crystals inside specialized pigment cells in zebrafish — determine its make-up and how these different mechanisms interact and eventually replicate the crystallization process in the lab.

While the project focuses on zebrafish, the findings could suggest similar processes in other organisms the team may explore next.

“We will first focus on zebrafish as a model organism to elucidate the mechanisms and metabolomics of the organelle that produces the organic crystals, and their implications in optics and purine metabolism disorders,” says Monje. “We will not explore other organism in this award cycle, but the learning outcomes will help us determine which targets to explore next.”