Project description:Reveal differentially regulated genes and cellular pathways within allergic and non-allergic asthmatic children compared to healthy controls Peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) were obtained from allergic asthmatics (n=14), non-allergic asthmatics (n=8) and healthy controls (n=14) and kept with anti-CD3/CD28 (CD328), LpA or without stimulation (M).
Project description:VAF347 is a low molecular weight compound which inhibits allergic lung inflammation in vivo. This effect is likely due to a block of dendritic cell (DC) function to generate pro-inflammatory T-helper (Th) cells since VAF347 inhibits IL-6, CD86 and HLA-DR expression by human monocyte derived DC, three relevant molecules for Th-cell generation. Here we demonstrate that VAF347 interacts with the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) protein resulting in activation of the AhR signaling pathway. Functional AhR is responsible for the biological activity of VAF347 since, i) other AhR agonists display an identical activity profile in vitro, ii) gene silencing of wild type AhR expression or forced over-expression of a trans-dominant negative AhR ablates VAF347 activity to inhibit cytokine induced IL-6 expression in a human monocytic cell line and iii) AhR deficient mice are resistant to the compoundâs ability to block allergic lung inflammation in vivo. These data identify the AhR protein as key molecular target of VAF347 and its essential role for mediating the anti-inflammatory effects of the compound in vitro and in vivo. Experiment Overall Design: Immature monocyte-derived DC were activated with anti-CD40 antibodies for 8 hours in the absence or presence of VAF347. Two donors (D1,D2) were used, resulting in four data sets: D1_ctrl, D2_ctrl (ctrl=no treatment), D1_VAF347, D2_VAF347.
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:The project aims to identify the RNA binding proteins that can specifically bind to mRNA internal modification N7-methylguanosine (m7G). N7-methylguanosine (m7G) methylation has been long identified as the essential cap modification for eukaryotic mRNA, but later has been identified internally in various types of RNAs, including tRNA, rRNA, miRNA, and mRNA. While the METTL1/WDR4 complex, responsible for tRNA m7G installation, has been suggested to be responsible for internal mRNA modification as well, little is known about the proteins that can identify and interact with m7G. To better understand its interaction with RNA binding proteins and further define its regulatory function in mRNA metabolism, we performed the experiment to pulldown proteins with different binding affinity on unmodified G and m7G and subject the enriched fractions to mass spectrometry.
Project description:This study provides novel insights into the potential anti-allergic mechanism of food-derived curcumin and EGCG, and then facilitates the discovery of drug target and the development of diagnostic methods for allergic diseases.