The intestinal tract plays a crucial role in development, regeneration, immunity, and nutrition. Despite their relevance, many critical aspects of intestinal development and function remain unexplored. In our laboratory, we take a multidisciplinary approach to better understand the molecular mechanisms involved in intestinal morphogenesis, patterning, and metabolism during homeostasis. We utilize organotypic cell models as basic systems and mouse epithelial tissues as more physiological models for our investigations. Additionally, we have initiated a new research line using mouse embryonic stem cells (mESC) to address epithelial lumen formation and asymmetric division during development.
This project aims to characterize the communication between immune cells and enterocytes during the early postnatal period under normal conditions and during physiological and pathological inflammation, with a particular focus on autophagy pathways’ role in this process.
Objectives:
- Establish primary lines of neonatal mice enterocytes for in vitro use in organ-on-a-chip technology systems with microfluidics.
- Conduct transcriptome analysis of neonatal enterocytes to identify specific markers associated with metabolism and inflammation.
- Investigate the crosstalk between epithelial and immune metabolism in LRE function and inflammation.
- Study and identify the autophagy-mediated secretome of intestinal LREs.
We utilize a range of in vitro and in vivo techniques, including cutting-edge, high-resolution microscopy, quantitative genomics and proteomics, and murine models of development and inflammation, to address our research questions.
