Email this pageBottaro Lab
The Team
Andrea Botarro, Ph.D, Associate Professor of Medicine
Igor Kuzin, Ph.D., Research Instructor
Dr. Bottaro's Research Interests
Dr. Bottaro's research interests include B cell activation, the molecular biology of antibody gene expression and reconbination, immunoglobulin class switching and trangenic/knock-out mouse models.
Funding
Dr. Bottaro receives funding through the NIH.
Relevant Publications
- Ichikawa HT, Sowden MS, Torelli AT, Bachl J, Huang P, Dance GSC, Marr SH, Robert J, Wedekind JE, Smith HC, Bottaro A. Structural phylogenetic analysis of activation-induced deaminase function. J Immunol 177, 355-361, 2006
- Neering SJ, Bushnell, T, Sozer S, Ashton J, Rossi RM, Wang P-Y, Bell DR, Heinrich D, Bottaro A, Jordan CT. Leukemia stem cells in a genetically defined model of murine blast crisis CML. Blood 110, 2578-2585, 2007.
- Marr S, Morales H, Bottaro A, Cooper M, Flajnik M and Robert J. Localization and differential expression of Activation-Induced Cytosine Deaminase (AID) in the amphibian Xenopus upon antigen stimulations and during early development. J Immunol, 179, 6783-6789, 2007
- Kuzin II, Bagaeva L, Young F, Bottaro A. Requirement for enhancer specificity in immunoglobulin heavy chain locus regulation. J Immunol 180, 7443-7450, 2008
- Wang PY, Young F, Chen CY, Stevens B, Neering SJ, Bushnell T, Kuzin, I, Heinrich D, Bottaro A and Jordan CT. The biological properties of leukemias arising from BCR/ABL-mediated transformation vary as a function of developmental origin and activity of the p19ARF gene. Blood, in press, 2008
Complete list of Dr. Bottaro's publications
Dr. Kuzin's Research Interests
Dr. Kuzin is currently working on two major research projects. The goal of the first one is to elucidate the mechanisms that regulate expression and recombination of immunoglobulin heavy chain (IgH) genes. Specifically, he and his are interested in the role of enhancer specificity in the IgH locus regulation. There are several enhancer elements within IgH locus. One of the best characterized is intronic Em enhancer, which plays a role in regulation of gene transcription, VDJ recombination, somatic hypermutation, and immunoglobulin class switching. In their studies, to address the role of enhancer specificity in the regulation of IgH locus activity, they have created transgenic mice bearing either a deletion of the Em core element or replacement of the same element with the strong, ubiquitous SV40 transcriptional enhancer. The phenotype of these transgenic mice is currently under investigation.
The goal of the second project is to develop an artificial in vitro system for the induction of antibody immune response by cultivated human lymphocytes. They use specially designed bioreactors in which human lymphocytes isolated from donor tonsils are propagated, and explore various conditions that would be optimal for the induction of primary and secondary antibody immune responses to a variety of antigens. These studies have potential clinical application.
Relevant Publications
- Kuzin II, Ugine GD, Barth RK, Shultz LD, Nahm MH, Young FM, Bottaro A.A new murine model of humoral immuno-deficiency specifically affects classswitching to T-independent antigens. Eur J Immunol. 2004, 34(7):1807-16.
- Filatov AV, Shmigol IB, Kuzin II, Sharonov GV, Feofanov AV.Resistance of cellular membrane antigens to solubilization with Triton X-100 as amarker of their association with lipid rafts-analysis by flow cytometry. J Immunol Methods. 2003, 278(1-2):211-9.
- Kuzin II, Snyder JE, Ugine GD, Wu D, Lee S, Bushnell T Jr, Insel RA, Young FM,Bottaro A. Tetracyclines inhibit activated B cell function. Int Immunol. 2001 (7):921-31
- Kuzin II, Ugine GD, Wu D, Young F, Chen J, Bottaro A. Normal isotype switching in B cells lacking the I mu exon splice donor site:evidence for multiple I mu-like germline transcripts. J Immunol. 2000, 164(3):1451-7
