Stress is everywhere and everyone experiences it, so Sarah Hall said her research about it is important.

Hall, a biology professor at Syracuse University, has received a $446,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health for her research in epigenetics and how stress can influence gene changes.

Epigenetics is defined as the study of chemical reactions occur at the genome and the factors that influence them, according to the University of Utah website.

Hall said she believes stress, set early on, can cause a cell to change how genes are regulated. In some cases stress can help people to adapt to situations — other times, it can lead to disease.

Hall and her team of SU students have been conducting experiments on C. elegans, small worms who have gene pathways and developmental systems similar to a human’s. They have been subjecting the worms to stress early on in their lives, she said.

The worms are usually hermaphroditic and can reproduce alone, making them ideal for Hall’s experiments, she added.

“… You can grow these giant genetically identical populations,” Hall said.

She and her team split the populations and saw how different types of stress altered their genes. While C. elegans may not live long enough to get the disease, their changes are similar to what happens when a human gets it. Hall said the worms can exude, “the hallmarks of precancer.”

One of the genes altered by Hall’s experiment is OSM-9, a protein that resides in the human body, and is known as a TRP, or a trip channel. In humans this triggers muscles without the impulse being carried all the way up to the brain, similarly to when a person touches a hot stove. Trip channels also alert us to “noxious gases”, like wasabi, or cinnamon.

Hall relates it to being nose blind. If C. elegans are exposed to a noxious chemical and they experience stress it turns that trip channel off in one neuron, but it stays on in all the other neurons, resulting in the animals behaving differently as adults.

“So now animals that didn’t experience stress (noxious chemical) when they encounter this particular chemical, they avoid it,” Hall said. “They just go away from that chemical, but the animals that did experience stress no longer respond to it, almost as if it wasn’t there.”

The worms adapted to their environment, which allowed them to breed and mate in more places than those who did not experience the stress.

However, the project is far from over, which is where the grant money comes in to play. The $446,000 will be used to fulfill salaries, pay summer stipends for undergraduates and pay for lab supplies.

Ramesh Raina, chair of the biology department, said the grant has garnered recognition from federal agencies since Hall’s peers in the field recognize the quality of work she is doing.

“This definitely raises the profile of the institution. Both the department and the institute … we are doing cutting edge research that is being recognized both by our peers and by the funding,” Raina said.

Hall thanks the students working in the lab, but said they still have a far way to go.

Published on August 31, 2016 at 10:03 pm