Rutgers genetics professor wins $240,000 Pew Award for brain research

NEW BRUNSWICK/PISCATAWAY, N.J. – A Rutgers researcher, who is shedding new light on how messages are routed through the brain, has won a four-year, $240,000 Pew Scholars Award.

The work by 33-year-old Genetics Professor Christopher Rongo of Rutgers' Waksman Institute of Microbiology ultimately could lead to better diagnosis, treatment and prevention of neural ailments such as stroke and mood disorders.

"The Pew Scholars Program supports outstanding young scientists and encourages more venturesome research such as the work of Christopher Rongo," said Joseph Seneca, university vice president for academic affairs. "His research could potentially hold the key to treating a wide variety of problems. We are very proud of his achievement in being named a Pew Scholar."

Based in Philadephia, Pa., the Pew Scholars Program in the Biomedical Sciences is designed to support young investigators of outstanding promise in the basic and clinical sciences whose work will advance human health. Funding is provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts, which support nonprofit activities in the areas of culture, education, the environment, health and human services, public policy and religion.

Rongo is studying how neurons or brain cells connect to produce learning and memory. Roughly 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses -- the gaps between neurons -- make up our brains.

"Imagine a post office that delivers to some 100 trillion addresses," says Rongo. "Even a single neuron can receive over 10,000 synaptic inputs or messages. The complexity of the network is enormous, yet the brain's neurons manage to sort it all out."

To understand how the brain does it, Rongo focused on a less complex network of neurons, that of the tiny roundworm, Caenorhabditis elegans. The worm has just 302 neurons, and only 5,000 synapses. What's more, researchers know how all 5,000 synapses are connected. The worm also has a half dozen of the neurotransmitters found in humans. Neurotransmitters are chemicals in the brain such as glutamate and serotonin that act as messengers from one neuron to another by exciting, inhibiting or modifying the activity of other neurons.

Rongo homed in on a single neurotransmitter, glutamate, the most abundant excitatory neurotransmitter in human brains. Like other neurotransmitters, glutamate works by attaching to specialized glutamate receptor sites on the membrane surface of the cell receiving the message. To observe and monitor interaction between neurons, Rongo implanted each worm's DNA with a gene from a certain kind of jellyfish that enables the animal to "fluoresce" or glow in the dark.

By attaching the gene to the worm's glutamate receptor genes, he was able to make the glutamate receptors glow so that Rongo could follow them wherever they appeared in the worm. "We are actually able to watch as new receptor sites are added to the membrane surface at the synapse," notes the scientist.

Rongo believes that, down the road, his basic research into how neurons are regulated, how they make connections with each other and how genes participate in the process, will lead to better ways to design new drugs to prevent and treat stroke, mood disorders and other neural illness.

In stroke, which occurs when one of the brain's blood vessels rupture, much of the damage is caused by the death of neurons, not the damaged blood vessel, says the investigator. "Stroke is a two-part event," notes Rongo. "Neurons are killed by the ruptured blood vessel, but much of the damage is caused when the dying neurons dump their glutamate onto the surrounding neurons and cause them to open up their receptors in an unregulated way. Over a period of hours, this creates a chain reaction that causes many more neurons to die."

If a drug could be designed to interfere with the glutamate or mop it up in the cells during the first hours after a stroke occurs, says Rongo, it could stop the stroke from spreading and damaging other neurons. The scientist also asserts that greater understanding of how glutamate receptors work could lead to identifying those more prone to stroke.

"If we learn more about how the glutamate receptors work and combine it with other research mapping out the functions of each human gene, it may eventually lead to identifying genes that make some people more susceptible than others to stroke," he says. Rongo also feels his research should help scientists better understand schizophrenia and mood disorders, since those ailments may stem from forms of defective transmission.

An assistant professor at Rutgers' Waksman Institute since last year, Rongo has won several other honors including the Johnson & Johnson Discovery Award and The Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund for Medical Research Postdoctoral Fellowship.