[Bio-medical] NTU Assistant Professor's Finding Selected as the Cover Story of the Journal 《Development》

[Bio-medical] NTU Assistant Professor's Finding Selected as the Cover Story of the Journal 《Development》 (Chinese Version)

NTU Newsletter (Issue 968) The recent issue (June 5, 2009) of the top journal in the field of developmental biology Development selected NTU Assistant Professor Po-Nien TSAO's findings as the cover story.

Dr. Po-Nien TSAO serves at the Neonatology Division of NTU Hospital; his speciality is in lung development. Supported by National Health Research Institutes's fund, He had visited the Pulmonary Center, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, U.S.A. and studied with Dr. Wellington CARDOSO for two years. In the first year he had learned the foregut in vitro organ culture system, in the process of which it was included to know what the structure of mouse embryo is, how to take the foregut tissue by anatomizing mouse embryo, how to set the environment for the in vitro organ culture, and how to tell the organs cultured in vitro. Besides, he had also learend about the fetal lung in vitro culture, in the process of which he had learned how to take the complete fetal lung (during the 11th to 12th day of pregnancy) and culture in vitro for two to three days, observing its branching. Dr. TSAO used the techniques mentioned above and completed his first article about how the signals of Notch adjust the differentiation development of the skin mother cells at the respiratory passages. It was presented at Journal of Biologic Chemistry.

After that, Dr. TSAO used tissue-specific Shh-Cre mice to produce gene knockout mice, “pofutl,” with lung epithelial-specification, i.e., the mice whose Notch signal genes at lung epithelial tissue were knockout, in order to investigate the significance of Notch signals to the lungs in vivo. Interestingly, Dr. TSAO found that the pofutal mice could survive after their birth and had no respiration symptoms. But after one month, the death rate was high. Dr. TSAO analyzed their lung tissue and found that this kind of mice would gradually loose their normal epithelial tissue at the respiration passage, which was replaced by many squamous epithelial cells, and this phenomenon resembled some epithelial pathological changes at the respiration passage due to asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Further analyzing the mice's lung epithelial cells, Dr. TSAO found that the pofutl gene knockout mice, from their fetus stage to the adult stage, no secretory epithelial cells, Clara cells, could be found. In stead, there were a lot of ciliated cells and over-generated neuroendocrine cells all over the whole respiration passage. At the same time, this specific lung phenotype could be observed as well in the culture system of fetal rat lungs in vitro and in another kind of lung epithelial Notch signal gene knockout mice (Rbpjk). The finding suggested that in the process of lung development, Notch signal can adjust and keep the balance of ciliated cells and secretory epithelial tissue. This finding was selected as the cover story of the top journal of developmental biology: Development.


Further Information:
NTU Newsletter Issue 968 (Chinese)



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