James Palis
University of Rochester, NY·Biology
Red blood cells make up more than 80% of all cells in the human body. Because each one lives only a limited time, the body needs a huge production system that can respond quickly to blood loss or low oxygen.
- Fields
Biology
Genetics
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
erythropoiesis
erythroid progenitors
red blood cells
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2028
What they work on
- Test whether BMI1 and RING1B, proteins that silence genes by packaging chromatin, sustain self-renewal of human self-renewing erythroblasts by controlling gene activity epigenetically.
- Determine whether BMI1 promotes self-renewal of human erythroblasts by regulating cholesterol homeostasis, a newly identified pathway, alongside the known Ink/Arf locus.
- Test whether Bmi1/Ring1b and their downstream targets control expansion of late-stage EP3/EP4 erythroid progenitors in mouse bone marrow at steady state.
- Examine whether Bmi1/Ring1b drive the preferential expansion of EP3/EP4 progenitors that occurs in mice responding to acute anemia.
More about the research
Most of this control happens at the stage of erythroid progenitors, the cells that give rise to red blood cells. In the lab dish, these progenitors can renew themselves only a few times. That limit is a major obstacle to growing specialized units of blood outside the body. This collaborative project, carried out with the Steiner lab, asks how erythroid progenitors self-renew, meaning how they divide into daughter cells with the same potential as the parent.
Why it matters
More than 11 million units of blood are used each year in the United States to treat patients with anemia. A better understanding of how red-cell progenitors renew themselves could make it possible to grow human erythroblasts in large numbers. The long-term goal is to produce red blood cells in the lab for blood banks and for patients with specialized transfusion needs.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Elizabeth Leibold
University of Utah, UT·Biochemistry
Determine whether loss of Irp2 serine 157 phosphorylation disrupts red blood cell production from within blood-forming cells, using bone marrow transplantation and flow cytometry of cell cycle, proliferation and iron.
Chongwoo Kim
Midwestern University-Glendale, AZ·Biochemistry
Systematically characterize secondary protein-protein interactions that act as selective checkpoints in assembling distinct PRC1 complexes, using X-ray crystallography, analytical ultracentrifugation and biolayer interferometry.
Pooja Flora
University of California-Riverside, CA·Biology·Early-career
Characterize how gene expression and chromatin accessibility change with age across the distinct stem cell pools of adult skin, including basal interfollicular epithelial stem cells and hair follicle bulge stem cells, using multi-omics profiling.
The school
University of Rochester: 38 labs on PI Pages, $492M a year on research, 308 research doctorates a year.
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