Expression of Wnts and Frizzled in Liver Physiology and Pathology

Description of projects available to graduate students:
The family of Wnt proteins, upstream regulators of beta-catenin, is composed of 19 related glycoproteins. Also, the receptors of these proteins consist of a family called frizzled, which is composed of 12 proteins. Since, my lab has shown the importance of beta-catenin in liver growth and development including liver cancer, we are now interested in identifying liver-specific Wnts and frizzled. in order to do that, we would utilize RNA from normal adult mouse liver to examine the expression of 19 wnts and 12 frizzled genes. After identifying the positive Wnts and Frizzled genes, we would utilize RNA from isolated cell types within the liver-hepatocytes, biliary epithelial cells, stellate cells and endothelial cells to address cell-specific expression. This will next be substantiated by examining their proteins by immunohistochemistry and western blots. Following this comprehensive analysis, we would use patient tissue from hepatocellular cancer and adjacent or true normal liver to investigate any changes in the RNA and protein expression of the liver-specific wnts and frizzled. This study can be further extended into liver development as we have isolated liver tissue from different stages of mouse development and this study can investigate the role of Wnts and Frizzled in liver development.

Techniques graduate student will learn:
Protein isolation, Western Blot, Immunohistochemistry, immunofluorescence, RNA isolation, RT-PCR, PCR, Immunoprecipitation