Cell differentiation and neoplastic cell development; mucus cell development; mucus cell differentiation and retinoids; molecular cloning and expression of cell differentiation; associated genes, profiling gene expression pattern. Lung diseases occur more often in industrialized countries. Most of the lung diseases are manifested with a dysfunction of the lining epithelial cells. Hyper-mucus secretion and the mucus accumulation are clinical hallmarks that are frequently associated with various airway diseases, such as asthma, cystic fibrosis, chronic bronchitis, COPD, etc. The nature of this phenomenon is not clear. This unit has been working on airway epithelial cells for past 20 years. The major contributions from this unit to the field are the cell culture model for studying cell differentiation, injury and repair, the mucin molecular biology, and the role of vitamin A in these cells. Currently, the unit focuses on the role of inflammatory cytokines in the regulation of airway mucous cell differentiation and metaplasia, airway cell-specific novel gene expression, and trans-differentiation factor. Since most of airway epithelial diseases are caused by environmental air pollutants, which include ozone, tobacco smoke, particulates, bacteria and viruses, etc. this unit has active research programs related to these issues. These studies include effects of ozone and smoke on airway epithelial cell injury and repair, cytokine induction and change gene expression, anti-oxidant mechanism, and signaling transduction, etc. For microbial infection, the unit is interested in lung-specific innate immunity by discovering and characterization of airway cell-specific beta-defensin, novel glandular mucin gene, and other microbial killing agents, such as SPURT. The unit is also interested in the role of virus in the induction of airway diseases and the exacerbation of the symptoms. For this, the unit has an ongoing Rhinovirus program, in collaborating with UCSF researchers, that focuses on the nature of viral virulence and its inducible genes in asthma exacerbation. Lastly, the unit has ongoing microarray and bioinformatics programs. The microarray approach allows the investigation of the change of thousands of gene expression in one chip. Various software programs have been developed to analyze the microarray data and to generate testable hypotheses that are related to the biological events. The bioinformatics program has allowed the discovery of novel mucin gene, ?-defensin genes, other novel genes and new pathways in various biological events. All these research activities are currently supported by RO1 grants from NIH, California State funding and from several industrial companies. Trainees working in this unit will gain knowledge as well as bench experience in airway epithelial cell culture, molecular cloning, microarray, bioinformatics, gene expression regulation, cell signaling and various cell biology and immunohistochemical techniques. In addition, trainees will have to design both in vivo and in vitro modeling experiments to mechanistically justify their research foci relevant to the biology of lung and lung diseases.
Visit Dr. Wu's website: http://faculty.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/faculty/rwu/