Role of the extracellular calcium-sensing receptor (CAR) in lung development and function

婴儿的肺在整个怀孕期间稳定生长，直到出生时几乎完全形成。出生后，成熟的肺完全负责从我们呼吸的空气中获得我们所需的所有氧气。然而，如果子宫内正常的肺发育出现问题，肺的正常功能可能会受到严重影响。这些问题可能会发生，如果一个婴儿出生过早，或者如果有一个畸形的胸腔。在这两种情况下，肺吸收足够氧气的能力都会降低。最近，我们已经证明，在子宫中，肺部有一个传感器分子，它可以检测到肺部本身或肺部血液供应中某些化学物质数量的微小变化。这向我们表明，这种传感器分子可能控制着肺的生长方式，而且这种传感器的问题可能导致疾病。为了验证这一假设，我们将培育没有这种传感分子的小鼠，并研究这些动物的肺是如何生长的。接下来，我们将研究传感器在肺部的实际工作方式，并将发现当使用一组制药公司最近提供的新药阻止传感器工作时会发生什么。这些实验将使我们更好地了解肺是如何生长的，将帮助我们确定这种重要的传感分子是如何工作的，并将导致治疗肺部在子宫内未能正确发育的人的可能性。

A baby's lungs grow steadily throughout pregnancy until they are almost fully formed by the time it is born. After birth, the mature lungs are completely responsible for obtaining all the oxygen that we need from the air that we breathe. However, the correct functioning of the lungs may be seriously affected if there is a problem with normal lung development in the womb. Such problems might occur if a baby is born too early or if there is a malformation of the chest cavity. In both circumstances the ability of the lungs to take up enough oxygen is reduced. Very recently we have shown that in the womb lungs have a sensor molecule which can detect very small changes in the amounts of certain chemicals within the lung itself or within the blood supply to the lung. This suggests to us that this sensor molecule might control how the lung grows and also that problems with this sensor might lead to disease. To test this suggestion, we will breed mice which do not have this sensing molecule and study how the lungs grow in these animals. Next, we will study how the sensor actually works in the lung and will find out what happens when this sensor is prevented from working using a new set of drugs that we recently been given by a pharmaceutical company. These experiments will give us a greater understanding of how lungs grow, will help us to define how this important sensing molecule works and should lead to the possibility of treating people whose lungs have failed to develop correctly in the womb.