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Indian origin researcher authors study on human response to oxygen levels
The research analyses how breathing air with different levels of oxygen affects the creation or break down of proteins
Isha Jain, senior author of the new study finding the effects of different levels of oxygen on mice, a species with similar gene function as humans / Gladstone Institutes
A new study explains the implications of breathing too much or too little oxygen. The study’s senior author Isha Jain along with fellow researchers at the Gladstone Institutes, California, have studied the mechanisms at play during inhalation, and how and why it matters for health.
The study explains how breathing air with different levels of oxygen – from scanty breathing, to just the right amount of air drawn while breathing, or too much – affects the creation and degradation of different proteins in the lungs, heart, and brain of mice.
The study also highlights a particular protein that may play a central role in regulating how cells respond to hyperoxia – a state of excess supply of oxygen in tissues and organs. Hyperoxia symptoms include muscle twitching, tinnitus, and nausea among others.
“These results have implications for many different diseases,” says Jain, senior author of the new study. “More than 1 million people in the US breathe supplemental oxygen every day for medical reasons, and studies suggest it could be making things worse in some cases. That’s just one setting where our work is starting to explain what’s happening and how the body responds.”
In the past, scientists have researched the effects of too little oxygen in humans. This study by Gladstone researchers studies the response to different oxygen concentrations using mice, a species with similar gene functions as humans.
The new research paper builds on the team’s prior work which revealed that in response to too much oxygen, certain proteins containing iron and sulfur clusters become degraded, leading cells to malfunction.
The team exposed mice to several weeks to air with oxygen level of 8 per cent, 21 per cent (the usual level that human’s breathe in Earth’s atmosphere), or 60 per cent. The mice were given food containing a distinct form of nitrogen that the animals’ bodies incorporated into new proteins.
This nitrogen isotope acted as a “label” that helped the researchers to calculate protein turnover rates – the balance between protein synthesis and degradation – for thousands of different proteins in the lungs, heart, and brain.
Researchers found that oxygen levels dramatically affected the proteins in the lungs of mice, than the heart or brain. Certain proteins with abnormal turnover rates under high or low oxygen conditions were identified. MYBBP1A was one particular protein that accumulated in high-oxygen conditions. It is a transcription regulator, meaning it directly affects gene expression.
Jain’s team is now examining whether MYBBP1A is protective or harmful during hyperoxia. This work could set the stage for novel treatments that require targeting the MYBBP1A molecule to counter the bad effects of hyperoxia.
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