Project description:Channel catfish (Ictalurus punctatus) and tra catfish (Pangasianodon hypophthalmus) both belong to the order Siluriformes. Channel catfish does not possess an air-breathing organ (ABO), and thus cannot breathe in the air, while tra catfish is a facultative air-breather and use the swim bladder as its air-breathing organ, which provides for aerial breathing in low oxygen conditions. Tra and channel catfish serve as a great comparative model for studying the transition of life from water to terrestrial living, as well as for understanding genes that are crucial for development of the swim bladder and the function of air-breathing in tra catfish. We selected seven developmental stages in tra catfish for RNA-Seq analysis based on their transition to a stage that could live at 0 ppm oxygen. More than 587 million sequencing clean reads were generated in tra catfish, and a total of 21, 448 unique genes were detected. A comparative genomic analysis was conducted between channel catfish and tra catfish. Gene expression analysis was performed for these tra catfish specific genes. Hypoxia challenge and microtomy experiments collectively suggested that there are critical timepoints for the development of the air-breathing function and swim bladder development stages in tra catfish. Key genes were identified to be the best candidates of genes related to the air-breathing ability in tra catfish. This study provides a large data resource for functional genomic studies in air-breathing function in tra catfish, and sheds light on the adaption of aquatic organisms to the terrestrial environment.
Project description:Cell cultures from three human non-smoker donors were exposed 1:50 dose (1.84ug/cm2) of diluted mainstream cigarette smoke or filtered air for 1h. Cells from four replicate inserts for each dose/time-point were pooled and placed in TRIzol either immediately after exposure or following a 5h or 23h recovery period after the cultures were returned to an incubator at 37ºC, 5% CO2. The ‘no treatment’ control (NTC) remained in the incubator and received neither smoke nor air. In order to perform robust statistical analyses three independent replicate experiments were performed on each of the three donors
Project description:Healthy human subjects were exposed to wood smoke particulate matter and filtered air on separate occasions. Alveolar leukocytes (predominantly macrophages) were then obtained and analysed by microarray to assess the impact of wood smoke on transcription in the airway.
Project description:Mice were exposed to filtered air or acrolein for 1 week. T cell subpopulations were isolated from the pulmonary tissue by cell sorting.
