| This dissertation details the use of new technologies to assist in better understanding diseases in the complicated organ of the lung. These two case studies exemplify how the use of new global technologies can aid any research project. In one such example, as seen in the protective role of statins in pore-forming toxins, a bottom up approach was first taken. Only when the traditional molecular biology failed to lead us to mechanisms, did we decide to use both next-generation sequencing and lipidomics to further along our story, assisting us in further understanding how statins conferred cellular resistance to pore-forming toxins in the human airway epithelial cells. In another example, we took a top down approach. Data mining of publically available datasets was done as an attempt to search for non-coding RNAs associated with a particular complex phenotype. Yet, these newer technologies still need traditional biological techniques. We followed up this data mining to elucidate to role of a novel long non-coding RNA, SCAL1, in human airway epithelial cells. It is only when these two fields, bioinformatics and molecular biology, come together can we really understand the molecular biology of lung disease. |
