RAGE in asthma

Description of projects available to graduate students:
The receptor for advanced glycation endproducts (RAGE) has been extensively studied in systemic vascular disease and diabetes. However, RAGE is almost exclusively expressed in the lung (no complications with diabetes). Recent GWAS studies have found that RAGE SNPs are linked to asthma. Project will include utilization of inducible RAGE KO mice in multiple models of asthma as well as utilization of soluble RAGE (decoy receptor) as possible therapeutic in asthma.

Expression of various RAGE SNP variants will be done to characterized the effects of these SNPs on ligand binding and RAGE signaling.

Many more RAGE and pulmonary disease projects are available to study. Please come see Dr. Oury to discuss.

Techniques graduate student will learn:
Animal models of asthma. Utilization of inducible RAGE knockout mice. Histologic scoring of disease. Pulmonary function testing. Cytokine analysis. Measures of inflammation. chemotaxis studies. Cell signaling studies. Protein biochemistry (measure Kd of RAGE for ligands). Protein purification. Recombinant protein expression.