Dr. Carl Johnston's work seeks to understand how the postnatal lung copes with external stress. A critical biological factor that plays a role in childhood pulmonary susceptibility is that a significant portion of lung development takes place postnatally. One of the environmental factors relevant to developmental lung disease is the recent increase in complexity and distribution, if not the levels, of airborne pollutants, including allergens and endotoxins, respirable particulate matter and irritant gases, exposure to which damages various cell types. Among the most important of these are the respiratory epithelium and critical immune effector cell populations. Furthermore; combined exposures to multiple pollutants may activate several unique signaling pathways which are age dependent and depending on the sequence of initiation may result in responses not predicted by evaluating exposures to an individual pollutant. His work depends heavily on mRNA analysis, microarray technology, immuno-histochemistry and in situ hybridization. This work is supported by participation in several NIH grants.
