How is Williams work related to our class?

  Professor D. Williams’s work provides an example of experimental design and looks at how neurons communicate. Their work will also relate to the cellular and gross anatomy of the nervous system, specifically the brain and the blood-brain barrier (“Dionna W. Williams - The Solomon H Snyder Department of Neuroscience”). Her lab has a variety of research interests, primarily cellular and molecular neuroscience and neurobiology of disease. In one of her most cited papers, she discusses how the transmigration of monocytes and HIV across the blood-brain barrier is critical for HIV neuropathogenesis and HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders. In this paper she examines multiple different receptors, cell types, and neurotransmitters are involved in HIV progression. They use techniques such as flow cytometry to measure the number of different proteins and receptors present on freshly isolated monocytes and mature monocytes and show that there is an increase in various receptors after monocytes have been incubated with HIV for 3 days with macrophage colony-stimulating factor (M-CSF). (Williams, Dionna, Journal of Leukocyte Biology, 2012) Another paper they were a co-author on explains the process in which astrocytes regulate peripheral leukocyte response to brain legions via shedding extracellular vesicles. (Dickens, Alex, Science Signaling, 2017) Many of the things that Dr. Williams researches relate to the material we have covered in class, including cell types, brain anatomy, receptors, and molecular biology of the brain.