Diseases such as diabetes, cancer, and atherosclerosis have been shown to have oxidative components that may account for some of the tissue injury that occurs in them. The Oxidative Injury Core of the Center was formed to foster interactions between Center Investigators and other investigators at Vanderbilt and Meharry who are studying oxidative injury and oxidative processes. This meeting has been well attended with 20-30 people being present at each meeting and provides an opportunity for investigators from different parts of the campus to exchange ideas. From these interactions formal collaborations often develop, and several recent ones follow. Dr. C. Ferris, a new faculty member in Gastroenterology, is an expert on heme oxygenase and has establishing colonies of mice overexpressing heme oxygenase isoforms and also knockout mice.
Heme oxygenase is known to be a defense against oxidative injury.
The project will examine the effect of selenium deficiency on mice with heme oxygenase-1 knockout. Their rationale is that the elevated heme oxygenase activity in selenium deficiency compensates for the loss of oxidant defense by selenium, and the hypothesis is that the knockout will not tolerate selenium deficiency and will show oxidative injury. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that ascorbate recycles tocopheroxyl radical to tocopherol, thus regenerating it. Caprioli, Hill, and Burk are collaborating to characterize the complex extracellular glycoprotein selenoprotein P, with an oxidant defense function. Using the Mass Spectrometry core facility, they have succeeded in identifying the 10 selenocysteine residues in the four isoforms of the protein.