Education and Outreach
Nadira De Abrew, Ph.D.
Division of Computational Biology
Education
B.A., Zoology and Environmental Studies, Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, Ohio, 2000
Ph.D. Molecular and Environmental Toxicology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2007
Postdoctoral training, Functional Genomics Program, The Hamner Institutes for Health Sciences, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, 2007-present
Research
2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) is an ubiquitous environmental contaminant that is responsible for various biological effects in animal models. Immunosuppression is among the earliest and most sensitive of these effects and a decrease in antibody secretion due TCDD-mediated disruption of B cell differentiation is partly responsible for this response. This impairment of B cell differentiation by TCDD is aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) dependent but the mechanism/s responsible for this observation still remains poorly understood.
The focus of my research project at the Hamner Institutes is to conduct a series of experiments that would aid in characterizing the molecular pathways that are responsible for the impairment of B cell differentiation following TCDD-exposure. We plan to employ a number of functional genomic based methods including gene array analysis and ChIP on chip. These studies will provide a comprehensive understanding of primary, secondary and tertiary gene activation in B cells following TCDD treatment. We hope that these studies will identify novel putative genes that are involved in the suppression of B cell differentiation following TCDD treatment. These gene expression profiles confirmed by other in vitro methods will present a broad picture on the underlying transcription pathways that link AhR activation to B cell differentiation.