Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

To develop new drug therapies for asthma, you need to have a comprehensive understanding of the molecular mechanisms of the disease. To do this, animal models are needed. Currently the most appropriate model for allergic asthma involves mice who are exposed to house dust mite (HDM) extract. However, despite this model being used all over the world for numerous studies, we still do not fully understand the big picture of how the thousands of proteins within the lung integrate with one another to create this "allergic mouse model". To answer this question, we used two groups of mice. One group was exposed to HDM and the other was our control (naive group). For each mouse we collected both lung lavage fluid (BALF) and lung tissue. Using these samples we performed proteomics using mass spectroscopy in order to measure all the proteins within both the lavage fluid and lung tissue. Once we obtained all the information on the abundance and diversity of the proteins we used bioinformatics to assess how HDM exposure alters the lung. Through our work we discovered that the protiens from both BALF and lung tissue are significantly different from one another. Additionally when you merge the balf and lung tissue together to create a "Combined" view of the lung we show that its also significantly different from both BALF and lung tissue. We further showed that this "Combined Lung" contains molecular and biological information which is often overlooked when you examine either the BALF or lung tissue seperately. This result is important as many studies involving HDM exposed mice only look at either the BALF or lung tissue, not both. Our results suggest that these studies could be missing key biological mechanisms which are hidden when you look at the BALF or lung tissue seperately and we suggest that future studies examine both the BALF and tissue together in order to get a fully picture of the biology of the lung.