Researchers at Sheffield are investigating pro-inflammatory cytokin gene expression using an RNase protection assay to study the life span of neutrophils at the site of inflammation
Researchers at the University of Sheffield Medical School in the Royal Hallamshire hospital are investigating pro-inflammatory cytokine gene expression using a BD RiboQuant RNase protection assay (RPA) system.
Colin Bingle, a lecturer in respiratory cell and molecular biology, explained: "In the academic unit of Respiratory Medicine our main interests lie in the regulation of chronic inflammatory lung disease, in particular the life span and apoptosis of neutrophils.
Our work involves studying the expression of the bcl-2 and caspase families of proteins, death receptors and inhibitors of apoptosis proteins (IAPs)." "We use the BD RiboQuant RPA system specifically to look at the expression of these different classes of apoptopic regulators in primary human neutrophils and then to examine in more detail those proteins that are expressed at high levels or whose expression is modulated by conditions known to affect life span." "It is also used as a tool for assessing the level of inflammation in a particular tissue by looking at the expression of individual mRNAs within a pro-inflammatory cytokine probe set.
The system is especially useful because it allows us to maximise the amount of information we can obtain from a small amount of starting tissue and as an added advantage, the data can then be presented in a visual format on an autoradiograph.
At the end of the day we are trying to understand why these neutrophils have a much longer life span at the site of inflammation than when circulating in the blood and the BD system is helping us to do just that."
