LS 09-Glucocorticoids

Cellular actions of glucocorticoids

NAT - Chemical Engineering

Metabolic Programming

Molecular Biology

BiochemistryBiologyBiotechnology

Planned project location:

TUM School of Life Sciences Weihenstephan, Chair of Metabolic Programming, Gregor-Mendel Str. 2, 85354 Freising

Dr.

Franziska

Greulich

franziska.greulich@tum.de

0049(0)8161712327

Glucocorticoids are widely prescribed anti-inflammatory drugs in the treatment of COVID-19, asthma, sepsis, and others. However, chronic and systemic treatment comes with severe adverse effects like diabetes type 2, obesity, osteoporosis, muscle atrophy, etc. Molecularly, glucocorticoids diffuse across the cellular membrane and engage with the glucocorticoid receptor (GR), which translocates into the nucleus. In the nucleus, the GR binds glucocorticoid response elements and represses as well as activates target gene expression.
Interestingly, the beneficial effects of glucocorticoid therapy target immune cells such as macrophages. In those cells, the glucocorticoid receptor is well known to directly suppress pro-inflammatory genes and activate anti-inflammatory gene expression. Glucocorticoid-mediated adverse effects on the other hand are a consequence of glucocorticoid action in metabolic tissues such as the liver. In the liver, glucocorticoids induce gluconeogenesis, contributing to hyperglycemia, insulin resistance and to diabetes type 2, especially in chronically treated patients.
In order to understand the cell type-specific actions of glucocorticoids in more detail, we employed a single-cell multi-omics analysis of murine livers after chronic glucocorticoid therapy. Our aim is to a.) understand adaptation mechanisms in the liver after long-term glucocorticoid treatment and b) decipher the cellular contribution of different cell types in the liver to the observed adverse effects.
If you are interested in contributing to a better understanding of glucocorticoid therapy, we are happy to welcome you to the Uhlenhaut Lab. We are an interdisciplinary Lab and offer any prospective student to either contribute to the computational or wet-lab part of the project depending on his/her interests. If you are computationally interested and familiar with R and/or python, you may contribute to the data analysis. However, we also welcome any student interested in data visualization/presentation via the web. On the wet-lab side, any prospective student will perform immunohistochemistry and/or in-situ hybridization experiments to add spatial information to our single-cell expression data.

40

3 years of bachelor studies completed

Students, that apply to this project should have a basic understanding of gene regulation. Depending on the student's interests, any applicant should have knowledge of R and/or python or wet-lab experience in molecular biology and murine histology.

We are looking for highly motivated, interactive and curious students that will add to the intercultural environment of the Uhlenhaut lab. Students are
encouraged to contribute with own ideas.