Project description:RATIONALE: The development and progression of asthma are strongly influenced by environmental exposures. We have demonstrated that mice exposed to a diet enriched with methyl donors during vulnerable periods of fetal development can enhance the heritable risk of allergic airway disease through epigenetic changes. OBJECTIVES: Since there is conflicting evidence on the role of folate in modifying allergic airway disease risk, we hypothesized that blocking folate metabolism through the loss of methylene-tetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) activity would reduce the allergic airway disease phenotype. METHODS: Using a house dust mite (HDM) induced model of allergic airway disease, we tested the effect of MTHFR on disease severity. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: Loss of MTHFR alters single carbon metabolite levels in the lung and serum including elevated homocysteine and cystathionine and reduced methionine. HDM-treated C57BL/6MTHFR-/- mice demonstrate significantly less airway hyerreactivity (AHR) compared to HDM-treated C57BL/6 mice. Furthermore, HDM-treated C57BL/6MTHFR-/- mice compared to HDM-treated C57BL/6 mice have reduced whole lung lavage (WLL) cellularity, eosinophilia, and IL-4/IL-5 cytokine concentrations. The effect of MTHFR loss on HDM-induced allergic airway disease was reversed by betaine supplementation. 737 genes are differentially expressed and 146 regions are differentially methylated in lung tissue from HDM-treated C57BL/6MTHFR-/- mice and HDM-treated C57BL/6 mice. Additionally, analysis of methylation/expression relationships identified 503 significant correlations. CONCLUSION: Collectively, these findings indicate that single carbon metabolism warrants further investigation as a disease modifier in allergic airway disease.
Project description:RATIONALE: The development and progression of asthma are strongly influenced by environmental exposures. We have demonstrated that mice exposed to a diet enriched with methyl donors during vulnerable periods of fetal development can enhance the heritable risk of allergic airway disease through epigenetic changes. OBJECTIVES: Since there is conflicting evidence on the role of folate in modifying allergic airway disease risk, we hypothesized that blocking folate metabolism through the loss of methylene-tetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) activity would reduce the allergic airway disease phenotype. METHODS: Using a house dust mite (HDM) induced model of allergic airway disease, we tested the effect of MTHFR on disease severity. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: Loss of MTHFR alters single carbon metabolite levels in the lung and serum including elevated homocysteine and cystathionine and reduced methionine. HDM-treated C57BL/6MTHFR-/- mice demonstrate significantly less airway hyerreactivity (AHR) compared to HDM-treated C57BL/6 mice. Furthermore, HDM-treated C57BL/6MTHFR-/- mice compared to HDM-treated C57BL/6 mice have reduced whole lung lavage (WLL) cellularity, eosinophilia, and IL-4/IL-5 cytokine concentrations. The effect of MTHFR loss on HDM-induced allergic airway disease was reversed by betaine supplementation. 737 genes are differentially expressed and 146 regions are differentially methylated in lung tissue from HDM-treated C57BL/6MTHFR-/- mice and HDM-treated C57BL/6 mice. Additionally, analysis of methylation/expression relationships identified 503 significant correlations. CONCLUSION: Collectively, these findings indicate that single carbon metabolism warrants further investigation as a disease modifier in allergic airway disease.
Project description:Obesity is associated with severe, difficult to control asthma, and increased airway oxidative stress. Mitochondrial reactive oxygen species (mROS) are an important source of oxidative stress leading us to hypothesize that targeting mROS in obese allergic asthma might be an effective treatment strategy. Using a mouse model of house dust mite (HDM) induced allergic airway disease in mice fed a low- (LFD) or high-fat diet (HFD), and the mitochondrial antioxidant MitoQuinone (MitoQ); we investigated the effects of obesity and mROS on airway inflammation, remodelling and airway hyperreactivity (AHR). HDM induces airway inflammation, remodelling and hyperreactivity in both lean and obese mice. Obese allergic mice showed increased lung tissue eotaxin levels, airway tissue eosinophilia and AHR when compared to lean allergic mice. MitoQ reduced markers of airway inflammation, remodelling and hyperreactivity in both lean and obese allergic mice, and tissue eosinophilia in obeseHDM mice. mROS regulates cell signalling by protein oxidation of multiple downstream targets: MitoQ reduced HDM-induced cysteine-sulfenylation of several proteins including those involved in the unfolded protein response (UPR). In summary, mROS mediates the development of allergic airway disease and hence MitoQ might be effective for the treatment for asthma, and specific features of obese asthma.
Project description:Allergen challenge induced mucus metaplasia modify the expression of two transcription factors belonging to the FOXA family: FOXA2 and FOXA3. Foxa2 expression is decreased during allergic airway disease whereas, Foxa3 expression is increased by allergen. Therefore, we asked whether persistent expression of Foxa2 prevents mucus and whether absence of Foxa3 affects mucus or other features asociated with allergic airway disease. We analyzed the effects of these changes in FOXA transcription factor expression using Foxa2 transgenic mice and Foxa3-/- mice. We found that persistent expression of FOXA2 reduced mucus but the absence of FOXA3 had no effect on mucus production induced by allergen challenge. However, the absence of FOXA3 decreased airway hyperreactivity and increased IgE production and eosinophilic inflammation but none of these features were affected by persistent expression of FOXA2. These results indicate that FOXA3 has functions distinct from those of FOXA2 in the allergic response. Keywords: gene expression comparison between Foxa3-/- and littermate control mice both challenged with OVA DNA miocroarrays were used to analyze lung mRNA expression of Foxa3 KO and littermate control mice challenged with saline or OVA. The experiment incorporated a 1 color design and used Agilent arrays that contained roughly 44,000 60mer probes that provide complete coverage of the mouse genome. 11 arrays were hybridized and represent 3 lung samples for groups WT saline, WT OVA and KO OVA. There are 2 lung samples for the KO saline group.
Project description:Allergen challenge induced mucus metaplasia modify the expression of two transcription factors belonging to the FOXA family: FOXA2 and FOXA3. Foxa2 expression is decreased during allergic airway disease whereas, Foxa3 expression is increased by allergen. Therefore, we asked whether persistent expression of Foxa2 prevents mucus and whether absence of Foxa3 affects mucus or other features asociated with allergic airway disease. We analyzed the effects of these changes in FOXA transcription factor expression using Foxa2 transgenic mice and Foxa3-/- mice. We found that persistent expression of FOXA2 reduced mucus but the absence of FOXA3 had no effect on mucus production induced by allergen challenge. However, the absence of FOXA3 decreased airway hyperreactivity and increased IgE production and eosinophilic inflammation but none of these features were affected by persistent expression of FOXA2. These results indicate that FOXA3 has functions distinct from those of FOXA2 in the allergic response. Keywords: gene expression comparison between Foxa3-/- and littermate control mice both challenged with OVA
Project description:Introduction: Prenatal and postnatal cigarette smoke exposure enhances the risk of developing asthma. Despite this as well as other smoking related risks, 11% of women still smoke during pregnancy. We hypothesized that cigarette smoke exposure during prenatal development generates long lasting differential methylation altering transcriptional activity that correlates with disease. Methods: In a house dust mite (HDM) model of allergic airway disease, we measured airway hyperresponsiveness (AHR) and airway inflammation between mice exposed prenatally to cigarette smoke (CS) or filtered air (FA). DNA methylation and gene expression were then measured in lung tissue. Results: We demonstrate that HDM-treated CS mice develop a more severe allergic airway disease compared to HDM-treated FA mice including increased AHR and airway inflammation. While DNA methylation changes between the two HDM-treated groups failed to reach genome-wide significance, 99 DMRs had an uncorrected p-value < 0.001. 6 of these 99 DMRs were selected for validation, based on the immune function of adjacent genes, and only 2 of the 6 DMRs confirmed the bisulfite sequencing data. Additionally, genes near these 6 DMRs (Lif, Il27ra, Tle4, Ptk7, Nfatc2, and Runx3) are differentially expressed between HDM-treated CS mice and HDM-treated FA mice. Conclusions: Our findings confirm that prenatal exposure to cigarette smoke is sufficient to modify allergic airway disease, however, it is unlikely that specific methylation changes account for the exposure-response relationship. These findings highlight the important role in utero cigarette smoke exposure plays in the development of allergic airway disease. Lung DNA methylation profiles of mice exposed in utero to cigarette smoke (CS) then treated with house dust mite (HDM, n = 8) or saline (n = 6), or exposed in utero to filtered air (FA) then treated with HDM (n = 9) or saline (n = 6)
Project description:This SuperSeries is composed of the following subset Series: GSE35979: Gene expression data from IL13-induced allergic airway inflammation of mice lungs GSE35980: MicroRNA expression data from IL13-induced allergic airway inflammation of mice lungs GSE37079: Methylated DNA immunoprecipitation (MeDIP) microarray data from IL13-induced allergic airway inflammation of mouse lungs Refer to individual Series