Joe Martinez, Ewing Halsell Professor of Biology
Research Close-up: Joe Martinez unravels genetic threads
(May 30, 2002)--Joe Martinez, Ewing Halsell Professor of Biology, is principal investigator for the project "Genes of Addiction," funded by the San Antonio Area Foundation. Within the high tech labs of the UTSA Biosciences Building, Martinez and fellow neuroscientists are looking for the genetic threads that will unravel drug addiction.
Using an animal model, the researchers have pursued the genes triggered in drug self-administration: Which genes are expressed, and which are repressed during drug use?
When the animal subjects pressed a lever in their cages, a dose of amphetamine would be administered, affecting the brain's nucleus accumbens, or pleasure center. When the subjects learned that this lever triggered drug delivery, they began to press it more often.
By the time addiction to the drug had taken place, the researchers were able to isolate gene samples and run them through a gene-array scanner, which highlights the genes that have become active and darkens the ones that are inactive.
The scientists' goal is to make a flawless model of the proteins and genes
in action in an addict's brain. Once their results are published, scientists
can then choose to manipulate parts of the biological process to discover
if they can change or stop parts of it from recurring.
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Mark Yudof
named sole finalist for UT System chancellorship
Research Close-up: Joe Martinez unravels genetic threads
UTSA receives
HUD grant to benefit graduate students
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© The University of Texas at San Antonio, 2002