Stanford University School of Medicine
The Robert G. Fenley Writing Awards: News Releases
Silver
Some 24-50 million Americans have autoimmunity. Four out of five of them are women. In a study published in Cell, Stanford Medicine scientists traced this disparity to a fundamental feature of biological female mammals: the presence, in virtually each of their cells, of two X chromosomes. “No mammalian cell, male or female, can survive without at least one X chromosome,” science writer Bruce Goldman wrote in his news release about the study. But having two of them risks the doubled production, in female cells, of numerous X-encoded proteins. That would be lethal if not for nature’s workaround, called X-chromosome inactivation: Each cell in an embryonic female mammal shuts down the activity of one of its two X chromosomes. However, Stanford Medicine geneticist Howard Chang, basic science research scientist Diana Dou, and their colleagues found, that very X-chromosome inactivation can lead to autoimmune disorders. That’s because a molecule called Xist (which an X chromosome produces when and only when it senses the presence of an active partner X chromosome) coats the first X chromosome, shutting down protein production. But doing that requires forming complexes with other molecules. The immune system sometime senses those complexes as foreign – and attacks them.
What was the most impactful part of your entry?
This release has, as of Sept. 26, 2024, been read 99,610 times online since it posted on Stanford Medicine’s website on Feb. 1, 2024, the day Chang’s study was published.
In addition, Goldman’s release generated queries from many dozens of news outlets and got coverage in well over 50 of them, including wire services (Associated Press, Health Day); national and metropolitan newspapers (New York Times, Washington Post, STAT, San Francisco Chronicle), all major television networks (NPR, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN), Voice of America, local broadcast outlets (KRON-4 TV, KTVU-TV, CBS Bay Area), and major popular magazines (TIME, The Smithsonian. National Geographic, Fortune). It was covered by specialized science- and medicine-focused publications (the NIH Director’s blog, NIH News, NIH Research Matters, Nature, New Scientist, Scleroderma Research Foundation, Helio, Women’s Health, Medical News Today, LiveScience). It also received major foreign coverage: El Pais (Spain), Globe and Mail (Canada), Agence-France Press (France). Language from Goldman’s release turned up verbatim (sometimes quoted, sometimes not) in many of these follow-on stories, as did links to the posted release.
After the release’s distribution and subsequent media coverage, Goldman received the following emails from Chang, the study’s senior author: 1) “Thank you so much for drafting a compelling story and outreach that garnered so much interest. This Xist RNA story is the most media attention that I have gotten for a scientific publication and the requests are still coming in. Kudos and a great chance to share our work with the public.” 2) “This is a tremendous amount of media coverage!” 3) “We have received very extensive coverage. My colleagues tell me that the story has been covered in Australia, Sweden, and my extended family even read about it in Taiwan.”
What challenge did you overcome?
The Xist molecule is just one of a huge number of so-called long non-coding RNA molecules that are produced but never translated into protein molecules. (There are more lncNRA-coding genes than there are protein-coding genes in the human genome!) It’s clear from this and other studies by basic-researcher Howard Chang that we are just scratching the surface of cell biology – and that living organisms are endowed, at the cellular level, with an almost unimaginable complexity. Goldman said that writing about this study and other work by Chang – who early in his career did much of the pioneering work on lncRNA – has massively enhanced Goldman’s own effort to understand life’s origins.
Contact:
Alison Peterson
medawards@stanford.edu