“Why Crozet” is a long-running monthly feature focusing on the many reasons why people love Crozet and its surrounding towns and countryside. We are lucky to have many neighbors, relatives and friends who come here because of their association with the University of Virginia, whether they’re involved in medicine, education, or the nuts and bolts of running one of the country’s most prestigious institutions. This month we report on a research scientist who is making a substantial difference in how heart disease is studied.
When Rebecca Deaton encourages medical students, graduates and post-docs working with her in the Owens Laboratory at U.Va, she tells them their painstaking work may appear to make only microscopic advances in the world’s understanding of disease, but those tiny steps may someday end in something big.
Deaton is a senior scientist in the lab run by Gary Owens at the Robert M. Berne Cardiovascular Research Center and she knows what she’s talking about, not only from a philosophical point of view, but because her own careful research over the months and years has contributed significantly to the study of heart disease. She has been the lead or co-lead of a number of journal articles (one is still in press) that make it possible for scientists to use a more accurate mouse model in the study of coronary artery disease.
One contribution has been to add a female mouse to the long-standing line of genetically altered mice in the study of smooth muscle disease. Smooth muscle is not an insignificant field of study: its disfunction drives our most common causes of death, those involving the cardiovascular system. Those muscles––some are buried deep inside our bodies and often described as involuntary––are also involved in respiratory failure, gastrointestinal diseases, genito-urinary problems and the disorders of pregnancy.
“So, an accurate mouse model is important,” Deaton said. Surprisingly, the line of mice altered to develop heart disease has only included male mice. As scientists became aware that males and females have differences much broader than their reproductive systems, the NIH directed research laboratories to include both in ongoing studies. This was not as simple as adding a female mouse to the male mice and feeding them a standard American diet.
Deaton explains: “Mice on their own in the wild almost never develop heart disease, and that holds true even when fed a western diet in the lab. When scientists first developed a mouse that did, the transgene was inserted on the Y chromosome, restricting the study to males for many years.” The Owens Lab successfully developed a female mouse which, like her male counterparts, responded to controlled genetic and lifestyle interventions. Demand from other researchers was so great that U.Va eventually gave the mice to a specialty lab with much greater capabilities.
Now there’s a mouse model graduate of the Owens Lab that further assists researchers. “Mouse models of atherosclerosis develop lesions in the aorta and carotid arteries, but they don’t develop advanced coronary artery lesions,” Deaton said. Unlike humans, they seem to be immune to spontaneous plaque rupture––a common fatal human complication––making them less helpful to scientists looking for therapeutic approaches to advanced disease. Mice are now available, thanks to Deaton and her co-workers, that respond more like humans to genetic and environmental manipulation. This allows scientists to determine more accurately which lifestyle and medication preventions and interventions are most effective.
Deaton graduated from the University of North Texas and moved to Charlottesville in 2004 with her husband, David Deaton, a business strategy expert. “When we were ready to buy a house, we really wanted to live in Crozet,” she said. “We love everything about it—the schools, the mountains, the wonderful Crozet Park.” They established a home here and later, she and her growing family––she and David have three sons––lived in Hong Kong for a while, then returned to her research here.
Deaton was glad to be able to continue her work through the pandemic shutdown. “In fact, I had to,” she said. “There had to be someone in the lab to feed and monitor the mice.” It was lonely work, but she said other labs also had a skeleton crew: “We might wave to each other through the glass,” she said, but at least the work was engaging and important during a quiet year.
Her upbeat and enthusiastic approach to the sometimes arduous and difficult work doesn’t mask her realistic appraisal of the life of a research scientist. “There are so many failures,” she said. Research is not much interest to the scientific community unless it can be reproduced, both by the original investigators and other scientists in other labs. Many times, a promising line of study just doesn’t work out and everyone scrambles to figure out why, retracing every step.
For her, she said, it’s always a labor of love, not only for the work but also for the potential to make life better for those suffering. “There are a lot of failures,” she said. “But the wins are so, so sweet.”
