BUMC Research Profile<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\nOur research is broadly focused on the host inflammatory response to acute bacterial pneumonia. During pneumonia, various pro-inflammatory\u00a0cytokines and chemokines are released to guide immune cells to the site of infection. Too much inflammation can compromise normal lung function\u00a0whereas, too little of a host response can lead to uncontrolled bacterial growth and sepsis. Cytokine expression thus needs to be carefully directed by\u00a0molecular mechanisms regulating transcription, mRNA stability, and translation. Our work is centered on several aspects of cytokine mRNA instability.\u00a0In general, cytokine transcripts are very labile which is a property imparted by various sequence elements residing in their 3\u00b4 untranslated regions\u00a0(UTRs). These 3\u00b4 UTRs contain AU-rich elements (AREs) and microRNA\u00a0target sequences that can lead to their abrogated translation, deadenylation, and decay.\u00a0We have found that\u00a0the Zcchc11 protein is a uridyltransferase that is responsible for the uridylation of specific microRNAs. End modifications of microRNAs, such as\u00a0untemplated uridylation, can reduce their ability to repress the targeted transcript. Future studies are designed to elucidate which microRNAs are\u00a0modified by Zcchc11 during inflammation and whether these edits have functional consequences. Understanding how these mechanisms function to\u00a0orchestrate inflammation during pneumonia will provide an important basis for future disease management.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Associate Professor of Medicine BA, University of Delaware PhD, Boston University Postdoctoral, Harvard School of Public Health BUMC Research Profile Our research is broadly focused on the host inflammatory response to acute bacterial pneumonia. During pneumonia, various pro-inflammatory\u00a0cytokines and chemokines are released to guide immune cells to the site of infection. Too much inflammation can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6648,"featured_media":0,"parent":10,"menu_order":15,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/immunology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1852"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/immunology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/immunology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/immunology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6648"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/immunology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1852"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/immunology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2492,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/immunology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1852\/revisions\/2492"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/immunology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/10"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/immunology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![](\"http:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/files\/2009\/09\/mjones-photo.jpg\")
Associate Professor of Medicine<\/h3>\n