Publications by authors named "Anna Method"

Background: Surfactant protein D (SP-D) is an innate host defense protein that clears infectious pathogens from the lung and regulates pulmonary host defense cells. SP-D is also detected in lower concentrations in plasma and many other non-pulmonary tissues. Plasma levels of SP-D increase during infection and other proinflammatory states; however, the source and functions of SP-D in the systemic circulation are largely unknown.

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SOX17 is a key transcriptional regulator that can act by regulating other transcription factors including HNF1β and FOXA2, which are known to regulate postnatal β cell function. Given this, we investigated the role of SOX17 in the developing and postnatal pancreas and found a novel role for SOX17 in regulating insulin secretion. Deletion of the Sox17 gene in the pancreas (Sox17-paLOF) had no observable impact on pancreas development.

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Anorectal malformations are congenital anomalies that form a spectrum of disorders, from the most benign type with excellent functional prognosis, to very complex, such as cloaca malformation in females in which the rectum, vagina and urethra fail to develop separately and instead drain via a single common channel into the perineum. The severity of this phenotype suggests that the defect occurs in the early stages of embryonic development of the organs derived from the cloaca. Owing to the inability to directly investigate human embryonic cloaca development, current research has relied on the use of mouse models of anorectal malformations.

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