Defining the role of cyclic nucleotide-gated cation channels in adult lung fluid homeostasis.

在子宫里，宝宝呢？S的肺里充满了液体。在出生时，这种液体会被移除，这样婴儿就可以开始呼吸了。去除这种液体的过程包括打开被称为通道的微小的特殊分子。随着孩子长大成人，这些管道必须保持畅通，以防止肺部完全充满液体。如果不这样做，肺部开始再次充满液体，呼吸变得非常困难，最终导致严重危险。这通常发生在：1)哮喘、慢性支气管炎、囊性纤维化、吸烟相关疾病和感染等疾病中，正常的液体运动发生显著改变；2)心力衰竭，当多余的液体非常频繁地聚集在肺中。虽然我们对出生时打开的通道了解很多，但我们对它们在成人肺中的工作原理知之甚少。事实上，我们仍然不确定哪些是重要的，或者它们确切地位于肺内的什么位置。我们将使用我们研究这些经络的新方法以及它们在肺小块和全肺中的作用来回答这些重要的问题。这些研究将第一次让我们找出存在哪些通道，它们的行为方式，以及肺的哪些部分最重要。为什么我们需要知道这个？这一新知识将告诉我们成人肺是如何正常工作的，并将帮助我们了解当它出现问题时会发生什么。增加我们对肺部正常情况下如何处理液体的详细了解，有可能应用于上述所有情况，我们的结果将有助于医生设计帮助人们更快康复的方法。这可能是通过现有药物的新用途，或者通过刺激针对我们研究工作发现的机制的新药的制造。

In the womb, the baby?s lungs are filled with fluid. At birth, this fluid is removed so that the baby can begin to breathe. The process of removing this fluid involves the opening of tiny, specialised molecules known as channels. As the child grows to adulthood, these channels must stay open in order to prevent the lung filling up totally with fluid. If they do not, the lung begins to fill with fluid again and breathing becomes very difficult, finally resulting in serious danger. This is what often happens in: 1) diseases such as asthma, chronic bronchitis, cystic fibrosis, smoking-related illness and infections where normal liquid movement is dramatically altered and; 2) heart failure, when excess fluid collects in the lung very frequently. Although we know a lot about the channels which open at birth, we know very little about how they work in the adult lung. In fact, we are still not certain which ones are important or where exactly they are situated within the lung. We will answer these important questions using our new methods of studying these channels and their effects in small pieces of lung and in whole lung. For the first time, these studies will allow us to find out which channels are present, how they behave and which parts of the lung are most important. Why do we need to know this? This new knowledge will tell us how the adult lung normally works and will help us to understand what happens when it goes wrong. Increasing our detailed knowledge of how the lung normally deals with fluid has the potential to be applied to all the conditions mentioned above and our results will help doctors design ways of helping people to recover more quickly. This might be by the new use of medicines already available or by stimulating manufacture of new drugs which will target the mechanism discovered by our research work.