To Investigate the Role of FOXF1 in Lung Development, Particularly with Respect to Alveolar Capillary Dysplasia and Misalignment of Pulmonary Veins

The research that is being conducted at Northwestern University (NU) will be a continuation and a modified plan for the Specific Aim 2 in the 2012 NORD grant awarded to me while I was at Baylor College of Medicine. We shall be growing VA 10 cells in Matrigel and will isolate RNA at different stages of differentiation and investigate the gene expression pattern so as to isolate the genes that are responsible for the branching. The micro RNA (miRNA) expression pattern will also be investigated. We shall use Illumina platform for RNA sequencing. It may be added that we have plans to carry out ChIP-Seq experiment in future using FOXF1 as antibody as a probe to isolate genes directly regulated by the transcription factor. Funds will be used to initiate a new project using HTG Edge System to analyze the miRNA profile from the archival lung samples from patients with Alveolar Capillary Dysplasia with Misalignment of Pulmonary Veins (ACDMPV). Eight lung tissue samples each will be used from typical and partial ACDMPV patients and there will be 8 disease and non-disease age matched controls. We believe that the results will provide insight into the role of miRNA in the manifestation of AVDMPV and towards lung development, in general.