LABORATORY TECHNIQUES
Our lab uses many surgical, cellular, and molecular techniques including:
Western blot analysis
ELISA
Bio-Rad's BioPlex multi-cytokine assay
Immunohistochemistry
Cell culture
Real-time PCR
Affymetrix Gene-Chip Array
Lung Morphometry
Northern/Southern blot
EMSA
Ribonuclease Protection Assay (RPA)
Lung broncho-alveolar lavage (BAL)
Rodent lung barium arteriogram and CT imaging
We utilize many techniques to study mechanisms of lung injury, lung growth or spinal cord injury. One example is perfusion of the lung with a barium sulfate gelatin solution which fills the arterial side of the vasculature (it does not pass through the capillaries). We can then visualize this vascular structure with an arteriogram as shown below. These arteriograms depicts vascular changes in the left lung of a rat after right pneumonectomy (right) compared to a sham thoracotomy (left).
The figure below shows the normal right and left lungs of a mouse (left) and the right lung two weeks after left pneumonectomy (right). As shown, the right lung grows to the size of both lungs.
Shown below is a large plexiglass chamber we use to expose mice to various inhaled conditions. We've used this chamber to chronically expose mice to 10 ppm inhaled nitric oxide (from the large tank on the right). The yellow device is a nitric oxide analyzer. We can also use this as a hypoxia chamber.
