TRIM72 promotes alveolar epithelial cell membrane repair and ameliorates lung fibrosis.

BACKGROUND: Chronic tissue injury was shown to induce progressive scarring in fibrotic diseases such as idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), while an array of repair/regeneration and stress responses come to equilibrium to determine the outcome of injury at the organ level. In the lung, type I alveolar epithelial (ATI) cells constitute the epithelial barrier, while type II alveolar epithelial (ATII) cells play a pivotal role in regenerating the injured distal lungs. It had been demonstrated that eukaryotic cells possess repair machinery that can quickly patch the damaged plasma membrane after injury, and our previous studies discovered the membrane-mending role of Tripartite motif containing 72 (TRIM72) that expresses in a limited number of tissues including the lung. Nevertheless, the role of alveolar epithelial cell (AEC) repair in the pathogenesis of IPF has not been examined yet. METHOD: In this study, we tested the specific roles of TRIM72 in the repair of ATII cells and the development of lung fibrosis. The role of membrane repair was accessed by saponin assay on isolated primary ATII cells and rat ATII cell line. The anti-fibrotic potential of TRIM72 was tested with bleomycin-treated transgenic mice. RESULTS: We showed that TRIM72 was upregulated following various injuries and in human IPF lungs. However, TRIM72 expression in ATII cells of the IPF lungs had aberrant subcellular localization. In vitro studies showed that TRIM72 repairs membrane injury of immortalized and primary ATIIs, leading to inhibition of stress-induced p53 activation and reduction in cell apoptosis. In vivo studies demonstrated that TRIM72 protects the integrity of the alveolar epithelial layer and reduces lung fibrosis. CONCLUSION: Our results suggest that TRIM72 protects injured lungs and ameliorates fibrosis through promoting post-injury repair of AECs.

Multi-scale modeling of early-stage morphology in solution-processed polycrystalline thin films.

A model is introduced for treating early-stage nucleation, growth kinetics, and mesoscale domain structure in submonolayer polycrystalline films prepared by solution-phase processing methods such as spin casting, dip coating, liquid-based printing, and related techniques. The model combines a stochastic treatment of nucleation derived from classical nucleation theory with deterministic computation of the spatiotemporal dynamics of the monomer concentration landscape by numerical solution of the two-dimensional diffusion equation, treating nuclei as monomer sinks. Results are compared to experimental measurements of solution-processed submonolayer tetracene films prepared using a vapor-liquid-solid deposition technique. Excellent agreement is observed with most major kinetic and structural film characteristics, including the existence of distinct induction, nucleation, and growth regimes, the onset time for nucleation, the number of domains formed per unit area, and the micron- to millimeter-scale spacing statistics of those domains. The model also provides a detailed description the dynamically-evolving monomer concentration landscape during film formation as well as quantities derived from it, such as time- and position-dependent domain nucleation and growth rates.