The Scientist - USA (2022 - Spring)

MODELING EPILEPSY IN A DISH

USING PATIENT-DERIVED IPSCS

In this episode, The Scientist’s Creative Services Team spoke

with Evangelos Kiskinis, an assistant professor at Northwestern

University Feinberg School of Medicine, about his work modeling

drug-resistant epilepsies using induced pluripotent stem cells

(iPSCs), a technique that offers novel disease management

solutions that could translate to the clinic.

EVANGELOS KISKINIS, PHD

Assistant Professor Neurology and Physiology

Robertson Investigator, New York

Stem Cell Foundation

Scientific Director, Stem Cell Core Facility

Northwestern University Feinberg

School of Medicine

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chance to go back in time to study fungal
evolution. For Peck, this meant an oppor-
tunity to better understand the history of
fungal disease in coffee plants—and per-
haps identify new ways to beat it.
Specifically, Peck was interested in
Fusarium xylarioides, a fungal species that
causes coffee wilt disease in crops in Ethio-
pia and other countries in eastern and cen-
tral Africa. This disease, which affects mainly
Coffea arabica and C. robusta and was first
detected in the 1920s, causes leaves to dry
out, restricts water transport, and eventually
kills the plant. In the 1950s, an international
collaboration to reduce the spread of the
disease temporarily brought the endemic
pathogen under control with improved
crop hygiene and breeding, according to
Peck. But in the 1970s, it reemerged. Since
then, the fungus has evolved into “these two
very distinct post-1970 populations that we
see today—one on arabica coffee in Ethio-
pia, and one on robusta coffee in the Congo
Basin,” Peck says.

To understand how the fungus had

changed over the past few decades, Peck

and her team rehydrated the samples with

water to reawaken a total of six pre-1970s

F. xylarioides strains from the CABI col-

lection. The team dubbed these strains,

which were responsible for outbreaks of

coffee wilt disease in the middle of the

last century, Coffea after their host plant

genus. After checking the fungal spores

under a microscope to rule out contami-

nation, Peck extracted DNA from the sam-

ples and sent it for sequencing in a lab at

the University of Cambridge.

Analyzing the data from these and sam-

ples from both modern populations, the

researchers found that robusta-infecting

F. xylarioides bore strong genetic similar-

ities to the preserved Coffea strains. The

results suggest that “the robusta [fun-

gal] population emerged from within a

wider recombining population of [Cof-

fea] strains from the initial pre-1970s

outbreak,” Peck writes in an email, “whilst

the arabica population appears to have

diverged separately and shares a com-

mon ancestor with both the [Coffea] and

robusta strains” of F. xylarioides.

The findings showed that the two mod-

ern populations are genetically distinct,

Peck says, adding that she is intrigued by

the possibility that they have evolved to

be host-specific. The research also found

that both modern F. xylarioides strains

share genes with F. oxysporum, a fun-

gal strain that causes wilting in banana

These sinister strains once

presented a deadly threat to

coffee and other important

crop plants.

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