Dr. Andrew Simmonds

Developmental biologist’s focus on RNA couldn’t be timelier

“I take the long term view that we’re helping to find cures perhaps five or ten years down the road,” says cell biologist Andrew Simmonds

Cell biology assistant professor Andrew Simmonds insists the fruit flies in the lunch rooms of the Medical Sciences Building are not his escapees. He still keeps his across the campus, in the Biological Sciences Building, where he completed his graduate work with thesis advisor John Bell.

Unlike his fruit flies, however, Dr. Simmonds has migrated to the southern part of the University of Alberta campus, finding a home in one of the strongest basic science departments of its kind in Canada, bringing with him a particular kind of expertise that’s in high demand.

Over the years, the ubiquitious little fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, has become one of the “glamour” species of the biological research world. In 1995, The Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly to Edward Lewis, Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard and Eric Wieschaus, developmental biologists who discovered important genetic mechanisms that control early embryonic development.

They used the humble fruit fly as their experimental model, knowing that the principles found in the fruit fly, apply also to higher organisms including humans. That same year, while long-established scientists who had toiled in relative obscurity with the lowly fruit fly were finally earning high scientific praise, Dr. Simmonds published a piece with Dr. Bell, in Nature on the distinguishable function for engrailed and invected in anterior-posterior patterning of the Drosophila wing.

Six years later, he once again found his work being published in one of the world’s most prestigious journals, this time in Cell, a paper titled Apical localization of wingless transcripts is required for wingless signaling. Simmonds has discovered that a class of proteins, WNT proteins—well known as potent cancer inducers—are regulated by the selective movement of RNA in epithelial cells.

Now his group is attempting to understand more fully the process that controls how cells produce proteins through the selective transport of intermediate messenger templates. He suspects that several of the localized RNAs will also be the products of genes controlling cell signaling and growth, and that some of the same proteins are responsible for transporting WNT and other localized RNAs.

Ultimately, he’s hopeful the work will lead to a better understanding of the activity of signaling molecules. “As the common proteins that control this process are identified, this may lead to potential drug-based interventions to control signaling genes involved in several diseases including cancer,” he explains.

His focus on RNA couldn’t be timelier. He now finds himself on the cusp of discovery, in an area of research that promises to explode exponentially. RNA, or ribonucleic acid, he says, have often been thought of as simply passive messengers transmitting genetic information from the DNA in the nucleus to the cytoplasm and synthesizing proteins. But late last year, the journal Science tagged the research work associated with the little molecules as the number one scientific development.

“The new picture,” the editors wrote, “which came sharply into focus this year, shows small RNAs at the helm of many of the cell’s genetic workings.”

Dr. Simmonds is studying a crucial aspect of those genetic workings—but he rejects any description of his work as “basic.” In fact, he says, “I take offence to that. We’re figuring out basic processes. Model systems are slowly getting the recognition they deserve. Drosophila is simple enough to study, yet complex enough to be relevant to the study of human disease.

“I take the long term view that we’re helping to find cures that are perhaps five or ten years down the road, and in a perfect world, we have a responsibility as researchers to study things that are relevant to those who are paying our salaries.”

For further information, please contact Dr. Andrew Simmonds using the Email contact form or by phone at 780 492-1840