From leaf to itch
Researchers from Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital are among the first to trace poison ivy’s molecular path, following the effect from leaf to burning itch and pointing a potentially soothing way forward. Investigators led by Assistant Professor of Microbiology and Immunobiology Florian Winau were able to do what previous teams hadn’t managed: illuminate the role of a key molecule called CD1a in a chain reaction that begins when the shiny leaf touches the skin. Until now, that molecule’s role lay in a scientific blind spot created because ordinary lab mice — crucial to immunology study — don’t produce CD1a. Assistant Professor of Microbiology and Immunobiology Florian Winau (left) led the research with postdoc Ji Hyung Kim. Photo Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer The findings, published last month in Nature Immunology, took advantage of mice engineered to produce the molecule by colleagues at Kyoto University, which enabled observation of the entire inflammatory pathway...