James Collins
University of Florida, FL·Physiology
Iron is essential for making blood and carrying oxygen, but too much of it is toxic. The body has almost no way to get rid of extra iron, so the amount absorbed from food in the gut largely sets how much iron the body holds.
- Fields
Physiology
Medicine & Clinical Research
Biochemistry
- Topics
iron metabolism
β-thalassemia
beta-thalassemia
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jul 2029
What they work on
- Test whether high blood iron in Th3/+ mouse mothers, a β-thalassemia model, loads fetuses with iron and causes oxidative stress that damages developing tissues and leads to disease after birth.
- Test whether low tissue oxygen (hypoxia) from maternal anemia in Th3/+ mice, alone or together with iron loading, disturbs fetal energy metabolism and causes disease in the offspring after birth.
- Test whether lowering maternal blood iron in pregnant Th3/+ mice, by blocking gut iron absorption and iron release from body stores, prevents iron overload in their fetuses.
- Determine whether absorption of heme iron and nonheme iron is regulated together, using Sprague-Dawley rat models of iron deficiency and iron overload, including hepcidin (Hamp) knockout rats that model hemochromatosis.
- Test whether the nonheme iron importer DMT1 and exporter ferroportin (FPN) influence heme-iron absorption, and whether they sit alongside heme transporters on the cell and vesicle membranes of rat gut cells.
- Test whether HRG1, a high-affinity heme transporter on the surface of intestinal cells, is the gut's heme-iron importer, using HRG1 knockout Sprague-Dawley rats.
More about the research
Too little causes iron deficiency, the most common cause of anemia worldwide. Too much builds up in organs and damages them. The two projects study iron balance from two angles: what happens to a developing fetus when the mother has a blood disorder causing both iron overload and low oxygen, and how the gut absorbs iron from food.
Why it matters
Women with β-thalassemia increasingly carry pregnancies, which put both mother and baby at risk. Learning whether iron overload or low oxygen drives fetal harm, and testing ways to lower maternal blood iron, could point to treatments that protect babies from iron-related damage. Separately, clarifying how the gut absorbs heme iron could support a long-term goal: therapies that boost iron absorption in iron deficiency, which affects children, pregnant women and the elderly, and that curb it in iron-overload disorders such as hereditary hemochromatosis.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Yvette Yien
University of Pittsburgh, PA·Biochemistry
Determine how the mitochondrial unfoldase CLPX regulates PPOX and FECH, the final two enzymes of heme synthesis, in differentiating red blood cells.
Jennifer DuBois
Montana State University, MT·Biochemistry
Determine the structure, function, regulation and molecular interactions of the heme utilization (hmu) pathway in the gut bacterium Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron, and identify its metabolic end products.
Lai-Hua Xie
Rutgers University-New Brunswick, NJ·Physiology
Determine whether the mitochondrial calcium uniporter (mCU), a channel admitting calcium into mitochondria, also carries iron into heart-cell mitochondria and drives calcium dysregulation, oxidative stress and iron-induced cardiac toxicity, in isolated myocytes and in vivo.
The school
University of Florida: 65 labs on PI Pages, $1.3B a year on research, 795 research doctorates a year.
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