Researchers discover gene responsible for cilia, lungs' natural clean...( The bottom line of the research is tha...)

"In chronic lung diseases such as asthma, the repair process can be slowed or halted," Reed said. "Expression of this gene can be used as a tool to understand the repair process and how it is interrupted in asthmatics."

The gene may also be useful to scientists studying a less common disorder called primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD), he said. PCD patients' cilia do not move normally. Such people suffer chronic ear and lung infections and can require lung transplants.

A report on the finding appears in the current issue of the American Journal of Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology. Besides Reed, authors include Drs. Johnny L. Carson, Billie M. Moats-Staats, Ping-chuan Hu, Margaret W. Leigh and Albert M. Collier of the departments of pediatrics and cell biology and anatomy, the UNC Center for Environmental Medicine and Lung Biology and the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center.

Reed called the research, completed last year, "groundwork for quantitatively following airway epithelial cell differentiation." He and his colleagues currently are writing scientific reports on important further developments.

"This is an good example of the way information generated by the Human Genome Project and fundamental cell biology can be combined and translated into a human research setting," he said.

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Contact: David Williamson
david_williamson@unc.edu
919-962-8596
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
8-Jan-2001