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National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences

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Your Environment. Your Health.

Publication Detail

Title: ERK1/2 and p38 regulate inter-individual variability in ozone-mediated IL-8 gene expression in primary human bronchial epithelial cells.

Authors: Bowers, Emma C; McCullough, Shaun D; Morgan, David S; Dailey, Lisa A; Diaz-Sanchez, David

Published In Sci Rep, (2018 Jun 20)

Abstract: Inter-individual variability is observed in all biological responses; however this variability is difficult to model and its underlying mechanisms are often poorly understood. This issue currently impedes understanding the health effects of the air pollutant ozone. Ozone produces pulmonary inflammation that is highly variable between individuals; but reproducible within a single individual, indicating undefined susceptibility factors. Studying inter-individual variability is difficult with common experimental models, thus we used primary human bronchial epithelial cells (phBECs) collected from many different donors. These cells were cultured, exposed to ozone, and the gene expression of the pro-inflammatory cytokine IL-8 was measured. Similar to in vivo observations, we found that ozone-mediated IL-8 expression was variable between donors, but reproducible within a given donor. Recent evidence suggests that the MAP kinases ERK1/2 and p38 mediate ozone-induced IL-8 transcription, thus we hypothesized that differences in their activation may control IL-8 inter-individual variability. We observed a significant correlation between ERK1/2 phosphorylation and IL-8 expression, suggesting that ERK1/2 modulates the ozone-mediated IL-8 response; however, we found that simultaneous inhibition of both kinases was required to achieve the greatest IL-8 inhibition. We proposed a "dimmer switch" model to explain how the coordinate activity of these kinases regulate differential IL-8 induction.

PubMed ID: 29925859 Exiting the NIEHS site

MeSH Terms: Bronchi/cytology*; Cells, Cultured; Epithelial Cells/drug effects*; Epithelial Cells/metabolism*; Humans; Interleukin-8/metabolism*; Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinase 1/genetics; Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinase 1/metabolism*; Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinase 3/genetics; Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinase 3/metabolism*; Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinases/metabolism; Ozone/pharmacology*; Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction; p38 Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinases/genetics; p38 Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinases/metabolism*

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