Support from the Douglas J. Epperson Social Justice fund through the WSU Center for Arts and Humanities will be used by Dr. Elissa Schwartz to help develop workshops and forums to connect underrepresented trainees from WSU and abroad (particularly Africa) with professional development opportunities. This joint venture leverages the interdisciplinary faculty of the WSU Program in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, other faculty and researchers at WSU with expertise in mathematics and science, and the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences. For more information please contact Associate Professor Elissa Schwartz via her website.

Franceschi Microscopy and Imaging Center acquires new microscope

Washington State University’s Franceschi Microscopy and Imaging Center has acquired a microscope so powerful and versatile that Michael Knoblauch, the center director, compares it to a pig capable of making wool, milk and eggs. Or, to quote his native German, an eierlegende Wollmilchsau.

Technically, it’s an Apreo VolumeScope, and it brings a suite of imaging techniques, including the piecing together of detailed three‑dimensional images with a resolution of 10 nanometers, or about 1/10,000th of the width of a human hair.

The device also uses other techniques that can help analyze the composition of materials and map crystal structures. The combination of cutting‑edge features is unique in the Inland Northwest and fitting for a facility serving scientists from fields as diverse as microbiology, human biology and zoology, plant biology, physics, geology, material and food sciences, chemistry and others, said Knoblauch.

The $888,000 machine, funded in part by the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, arrived on campus in early November. It will be ready for users on March 1, with a couple months of instrument time already lined up. It will supplement the center’s FEI Quanta‑200 scanning electron microscope, a center workhorse that over the last three years was used by nearly 100 research groups for almost 9,000 hours, or 57 hours a week.

The VolumeScope’s 3D reconstruction feature “allows identification of subcellular structures at unprecedented detail for life scientists,” according to the center’s grant application. A scanning electron microscope captures two‑dimensional images of a specimen, and a superfine knife, or ultramicrotome, shaves off ultrathin sections between images. The images are then stitched together for viewing in three dimensions.

Energy dispersive spectroscopy, or EDS, measures the x‑ray spectra‑light wavelengths unique to different elements—to identify and map the chemical composition of samples.

In its so‑called “high‑vacuum mode,” the VolumeScope’s resolution is as low as .8 nanometers, less than a billionth of a meter and an improvement over the previous resolution of 1.2 nanometers. That’s approaching the size of just a few atoms.

A third technology, electron backscatter diffraction, or EBSD, can map the crystal state of a material. This is important for determining the quality of materials like alloys, Knoblauch said.

“This instrument will allow us to perform cutting‑edge research,” Knoblauch wrote in the center’s grant application, “and will significantly increase our capabilities and competitiveness.”

Genetic mutation drives tumor regression in Tasmanian devils

Genes and other genetic variations that appear to be involved in cancerous tumors shrinking in Tasmanian devils have been discovered by Washington State University scientists.
The research is an important first step toward understanding what is causing devil facial tumor disease — a nearly 100 percent fatal and contagious form of cancer — to go away in a small percentage of Tasmanian devils. Indirectly, it could have implications for treating cancer in humans and other mammals as well.
“Some of the genes we think have a role in tumor regression in Tasmanian devils are also shared by humans,” said Mark Margres, a former WSU postdoctoral researcher now at Clemson University. “While still in a very early stage, this research could eventually help in the development of drugs that elicit the tumor regression response in devils, humans and other mammals that don’t have this necessary genetic variation.”

Disappearing devils

Tasmanian devils have been pushed to the brink of extinction by the rapid spread of devil facial tumor disease, one of only four known forms of transmissible cancer and by far the deadliest. Since it was first documented in 1996, the disease has wiped out an estimated 80 percent of devils in Tasmania, the only place in the world where the animals live.
Margres is part of an international team of researchers studying devil facial tumor disease that is led by Andrew Storfer, an evolutionary geneticist and WSU professor of biology.
For the last decade, Storfer’s team has been investigating how some Tasmanian devil populations are evolving genetic resistance to devil facial tumor disease that could help the species avoid extinction.
A year ago, Storfer’s Australian collaborators, Manuel Ruiz, Rodrigo Hamede and Menna Jones noticed something very unusual while trapping and tagging devils in an isolated region of Tasmania. A very small number of devils that developed facial tumors did not die. Rather, over a period of several months, the tumors went away on their own.
“This was very unusual and we wanted to test for evidence of genomic variation that was causing these devils to spontaneously get better” Storfer said.

The researchers sequenced the genomes of seven of the Tasmanian devils that underwent tumor regression and three that did not.
They found the devils that lost their tumors had three highly differentiated genomic regions containing multiple genes that are known to be related to immune response and cancer risk in humans and other mammals.
“We identified some candidate genes that we think may be important in the tumor regression response and now we can begin to functionally test these genes to see if it is possible to elicit the same tumor regression response,” Margres said. “While it is hard to say anything definite with such a small sample size, I think this research is sort of the first step towards characterizing the genetic basis of the tumor regression trait.”
The results of Margres and Storfer’s work were published last month in the journal Genome Biology and Evolution. The researchers said the next step in the research is to analyze the tumor genome to see if there are specific mechanisms or mutations there that lead to tumor shrinkage.

Uncovering mechanisms of tumor regression

Tumor regression is not a phenomenon exclusive to Tasmanian devils. While extremely rare, it has been documented in human cancers.
One such cancer is Merkel Cell Carcinoma, a rare type of skin cancer that often appears on the face, head or neck.
Doctors observed spontaneous tumor regression in a Merkel Cell Carcinoma patient for the first time in 1986 and it has occurred at least 22 times since. However, researchers remain unsure of what causes the tumors to go away on their own.
Storfer and Margres hope is that developing a better understanding of the genetic basis of tumor regression in Tasmanian devils may eventually enable the identification of general mechanisms underlying tumor regression in Merkel Cell Carcinoma and other human cancers.
This research was funded by the National Institutes of Health (R01‑GM126563), the National Science Foundation (DEB 1316549), and the Australian Research Council (FT100100250).

Top photo: Tasmanian devils are the largest carnivorous marsupials in the world.

By Will Ferguson for WSU Insider