Expression of the proapoptotic protein Bax is reduced in bronchial mucous cells of asthmatic subjects
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The present studies were designed to determine whether our findings in mice showing that the Bcl-2-associated protein X (Bax), which plays a role in the resolution of allergen-induced mucous cell metaplasia, can be applied to asthma in humans. Immunostaining of autopsy tissues from mild and severe asthmatic subjects showed a significant reduction in the percentage of Bax-positive mucous cells compared with those from nonasthmatic controls. To exclude the possibility that postmortem changes may have affected Bax expression, Bax mRNA levels in airway epithelial cells obtained from nonsmoking asthmatic subjects were compared with those from nonasthmatic controls. Because the number of cells obtained by bronchial brushings is limited, we developed a robust preamplification procedure of cDNA before quantitative real-time PCR to allow detection of 100 gene targets from limited sample size, even when it was prepared from partially degraded RNA. cDNA was prepared by reverse transcription from RNA isolated from bronchial epithelial cells obtained by bronchial brushings from well-characterized subjects without lung disease and from subjects with mild asthma. Quantitative analysis showed that Bax mRNA levels were significantly reduced in samples obtained from asthma patients compared with nonasthma controls. Furthermore, Bax mRNA levels were reduced when primary airway epithelial cells from 10 individuals were treated in culture with the T helper 2 cytokine IL-13. These studies show that Bax expression is reduced in airway epithelial cells of even mild asthmatic subjects and suggest that restoring Bax expression may provide a clinical approach for restoring the normal numbers of epithelial cells and reduced mucous hypersecretion in asthma.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".