Project description:Mice representing phenotypic extremes of airway hyperreactivity and goblet cell metaplasia post-Sendai virus infection were identified from a 500 mouse F2 cohort (CB6F2/J). Whole lung RNA from 3 mice at each extreme was analyzed via microarray for gene expression. Subsequent pairwise comparisons between arrays allowed the identification of genes differentially expressed with respect to the disease phenotypes (airway hyperreactivity and goblet cell metaplasia).
Project description:Mice representing phenotypic extremes of airway hyperreactivity and goblet cell metaplasia post-Sendai virus infection were identified from a 500 mouse F2 cohort (CB6F2/J). Whole lung RNA from 3 mice at each extreme was analyzed via microarray for gene expression. Subsequent pairwise comparisons between arrays allowed the identification of genes differentially expressed with respect to the disease phenotypes (airway hyperreactivity and goblet cell metaplasia). Keywords: disease state analysis
Project description:Goblet cell metaplasia and mucus hypersecretion are disabling hallmarks of chronic lung diseases for which no curative treatments are available. Therapies targeting specific upstream drivers of asthma have had variable results. We hypothesized that an a priori-knowledge independent approach would point to new therapies for airway goblet cell metaplasia. We analyzed the transcriptome of an organotypic model of human goblet cell metaplasia. We combined our data with previously published datasets from IL13-exposed in vitro and asthmatic in vivo human airway epithelial cells. The drug perturbation-response connectivity approach identified the heat shock protein 90 (HSP90) inhibitor geldanamycin as a candidate for reverting airway goblet cell metaplasia. We found that geldanamycin not only prevented but reverted IL13-induced goblet cell metaplasia. Geldanamycin did not induce goblet cell death, did not solely block mucin synthesis, and did not block IL13 receptor-proximal signaling. Moreover, the transcriptional effects of geldanamycin were absent in unstimulated cells and became evident only after stimulation with IL13. The predicted mechanism of action suggested that geldanamycin should also revert IL17-induced goblet cell metaplasia, a prediction confirmed by our data. Our findings suggest HSP90 activity may be required for persistence of goblet cell metaplasia driven by various mechanisms in chronic lung diseases.
Project description:Primary culture airway epithelial cells, grown under physiologic air-liquid interface conditions, with, or without IL-13 in order to study the effects of this cytokine on mucous cell metaplasia, an important feature of asthma and COPD. Keywords: IL13, mucus, goblet cell RNA was isolated from primary culture airway epithelial cells grown at air-liquid interface, treated with or without IL-13 for 21 days.
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:Primary culture airway epithelial cells, grown under physiologic air-liquid interface conditions, with, or without IL-13 in order to study the effects of this cytokine on mucous cell metaplasia, an important feature of asthma and COPD. Keywords: IL13, mucus, goblet cell
Project description:Introgressed variants from other species can be an important source of genetic variation because they may arise rapidly, can include multiple mutations on a single haplotype, and have often been pretested by selection in the species of origin. Although introgressed alleles are generally deleterious, several studies have reported introgression as the source of adaptive alleles-including the rodenticide-resistant variant of Vkorc1 that introgressed from Mus spretus into European populations of Mus musculus domesticus. Here, we conducted bidirectional genome scans to characterize introgressed regions into one wild population of M. spretus from Spain and three wild populations of M. m. domesticus from France, Germany, and Iran. Despite the fact that these species show considerable intrinsic postzygotic reproductive isolation, introgression was observed in all individuals, including in the M. musculus reference genome (GRCm38). Mus spretus individuals had a greater proportion of introgression compared with M. m. domesticus, and within M. m. domesticus, the proportion of introgression decreased with geographic distance from the area of sympatry. Introgression was observed on all autosomes for both species, but not on the X-chromosome in M. m. domesticus, consistent with known X-linked hybrid sterility and inviability genes that have been mapped to the M. spretus X-chromosome. Tract lengths were generally short with a few outliers of up to 2.7 Mb. Interestingly, the longest introgressed tracts were in olfactory receptor regions, and introgressed tracts were significantly enriched for olfactory receptor genes in both species, suggesting that introgression may be a source of functional novelty even between species with high barriers to gene flow.
Project description:IL13 exposure results in a distinct gene expression profile in human airway epithelia. We investigated whether this expression profile can be used to identify compounds able to block goblet cell metaplasia We used microarrays to determine transcriptional changes in cultures of primary human airway epithelia grown at the air-liquid interface after exposure to 20 ng/mL recombinant human IL13