East Central Reporter

Grasping muscular dystrophy’s mysteries is the highest priority for Illinois State University’s Alysia Vrailas-Mortimer, who recently received a $435,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to expand her quest for understanding of the disease.

 

Mortimer, an assistant professor of aging and physiology in the university’s School of Biological Sciences, and her lab team study how genes relate to the disorder, particularly as it impacts shoulder or pelvic areas.

 

“People that suffer from this disease get weakness in their pelvic or shoulder girdle, and the result is usually that they can’t walk or lift their arms over their heads,” Mortimer said.

 

Coincidentally, the common fruit fly provides an excellent example of a species closely related to humans enough to provide clues to causes.

 

“About 75 percent of all genes that cause diseases in humans have an equivalent in the fly,” said Mortimer, whose lab houses fruit fly colonies. “Because the fly has such a simpler system, and we know its genome, we can understand how it might contribute to a disease in a very basic way.”

 

With scientists having linked the “p38” gene to specific human conditions including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s as well as muscular dystrophy, Mortimer’s students are assessing whether a process related to the gene may allow a build-up of damaged proteins that can lead to the disease.

 

Her team is collaborating with scientists at the University of Denver and the University of Alabama at Birmingham along with Illinois State biology faculty.