Ross Honored by American Society for Nutritional Sciences

February 20, 2001

University Park, Pa. --- Penn State nutrition scientist Dr. A. Catharine Ross has been selected to receive the Osborne and Mendel Award of the American Society for Nutritional Sciences for her outstanding basic research accomplishments related to vitamin A.

Ross, who holds the Dorothy Foehr Huck Chair in Nutrition in the College of Health and Human Development, will receive the award April 1 at the Society's annual meeting. The award consists of a cash prize and an engraved plaque made available by ILSI North America. ?

Ross has made major contributions to understanding the functions and metabolism of Vitamin A by linking basic biochemical research with dietary studies. Vitamin A is essential to the health of the eyes, skin and immune system, and its deficiency is one of the most prevalent and serious nutrition problems worldwide.

Early in her research on vitamin A, Ross characterized a protein that acts as a "traffic monitor" directing an active form of the vitamin to the liver for storage, to the intestine for absorption or to the mammary gland during lactation. She and her colleagues also identified two new enzymes that are important in these same processes. Her follow-up studies with rats showed that modifying dietary fat and vitamin A content alter the amount and precise composition of the vitamin in mother's milk.

More recently, Ross has turned to studies of the molecular and genetic regulations of vitamin A activity. Once again, she expects to link her molecular and biochemical studies with practical dietary findings. Using mice and rats, she and her colleagues recently cloned and characterized the gene for an enzyme that is critical to the storage of Vitamin A in the liver. The recent studies showed that regulation was controlled at the gene level and earlier dietary studies showed that the enzyme's activity was sensitive to diet. Currently she is continuing the research program using human liver cell lines and human biopsy tissues. She expects to be able to use the data to extrapolate to optimal levels of the vitamin for human and animal health.

Ross joined the Penn State faculty in 1994. Previously she served as a faculty member in the Department of Biochemistry at the Medical College of Pennsylvania.

She was honored in 1996 with the Evan G. and Helen G. Pattishall Award for Excellence in Research by Penn State's College of Health and Human Development. In 1986, she won the Mead-Johnson Award of the American Institute of Nutrition.

Ross has served on a number of policy panels including the National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine, Food and Nutrition Board, Committee on Opportunities in the Nutrition and Food Sciences; the National Institutes of Health Nutrition Study Section; and the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology Life Sciences Research Office Expert Panel on Vitamin A Nutriture.

A graduate of the University of California at Davis, she earned her master's and doctoral degrees at Cornell University. She is a member of the American Society for Nutritional Sciences and served the society as councilor from 1990 to 1993 and treasurer from 1996 to 1999. She is also a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Sigma Xi, Phi Kappa Phi, and the American Society for Cell Biology.

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Contacts:

Barbara Hale (814) 865-9481 (o)/ (814) 238-0997 (h) bah@psu.edu

Vicki Fong (814) 865-9481 (o)/ (814) 238-1221 (h) vfong@psu.edu