Greg Beitel Professor

Research Summary: 

My laboratory uses molecular/genetic approaches with Drosophila to investigate two areas: 1) Understanding how individual cells control their shapes and coordinate with other cells to create the complex epithelial tubular networks found in multicellular organisms. 2) Understanding how non-neuronal cells sense and respond to elevated levels of CO2 (hypercapnia) such as those present in patients with obstructive disease.  Our work has identified conserved genes that mediate hypercapnic suppression of innate immune responses in flies and mammals.

Selected Publications:

Martin RL, Maiorano J, Beitel GJ, Marko JF, McVicker G, Fondufe-Mittendorf YN 2017 “A comparison of nucleosome organization in Drosophila cell lines”, PLoS One. 2017 Jun 1;12(6):e0178590. PMCID: PMC5453549

Brace J, Flores L, Baiduc R. Light G, Beitel GJ, and Lo S, 2018 “Design and evaluation of a cross-disciplinary research mentor training program”, Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership in Learning. 26(4): 377-399

Casalino-Matsuda SM, Wang N, Ruhoff PT, Matsuda H, Nlend MC, Nair A, Szleifer I, Beitel GJ, Sznajder JI, Sporn PHS. 2018 “Hypercapnia Alters Expression of Immune Response, Nucleosome Assembly and Lipid Metabolism Genes in Differentiated Human Bronchial Epithelial Cells". Scientific reports. 2018; 8(1):13508. PMCID: PMC6131151

McSharry SS and Beitel GJ “The Caspase-3 homolog DrICE regulates endocytic trafficking during Drosophila tracheal morphogenesis”, Nature Communications 2019; 10(1):1031. PMCID: PMC6399233

Yang R, Li E, Kwon YJ, Mani M and Beitel GJ, 2019 “QuBiT: a quantitative tool for analyzing epithelial tubes reveals unexpected patterns of organization in the Drosophila trachea". Development. 2019 May 16;146(12). pii: dev172759. doi: 10.1242/dev.172759. PMCID: PMC6602340.

Shigemura M, Lecuona E, Angulo M, Dada LA, Edwards MB, Welch LC, Casalino-Matsuda SM, Sporn PHS, Vadász I, Helenius IT, Nader GA, Gruenbaum Y, Sharabi K, Cummins E, Taylor C, Bharat A, Gottardi CJ, Beitel GJ, Kaminski N, Budinger GRS, Berdnikovs S, Sznajder JI. 2019 “Elevated CO2 regulates the Wnt signaling pathway in mammals, Drosophila melanogaster and Caenorhabditis elegans.” Sci Rep. 2019(3;9): 18251. PMC6890671.

Casalino-Matsuda SM, Chen F, Gonzalez-Gonzalez FJ, Nair A, Dib S, Yemelyanov A, Gates K, Budinger GRS, Beitel GJ, Sporn PHS. 2020 “Hypercapnia Suppresses Macrophage Antiviral Activity and Increases Mortality of Influenza A Infection via Akt1” J Immunol. 205(2):489-501, PMC7343622

Nyberg KG, Nguyen JQ, Kwon YJ, Blythe S, Beitel GJ, Carthew R. 2020 “A pipeline for precise and efficient genome editing by sgRNA-Cas9 RNPs in Drosophila” Fly (Austin)14(1-4):34-48. PMC7746241

Casalino-Matsuda SM, Berdnikovs S, Wang N, Nair A, Gates KL, Beitel GJ, Sporn PHS. 2021 “Hypercapnia selectively modulates LPS-induced changes in innate immune and DNA replication-related gene transcription in the macrophage” Interface Focus 11(2):20200039, PMC7898147

Casalino-Matsuda S.M., Chen F., Gonzalez-Gonzalez FJ, Matsuda H., Nair A., Abdala-Valencia H, Budinger G.R.S., Dong J.T., Beitel G.J., Sporn P.H.S., 2024 “Myeloid Zfhx3 Deficiency Protects Against Hypercapnia-induced Suppression of Host Defense Against Influenza A Virus”, J. Clinical Investigation Insight 9:e170316. PMID: 38227369; PMCID: PMC11143927

 

Selected Honors:

Helen Hay Whitney Postdoctoral Fellowship

Burroughs Wellcome Career Development Award

NSF CAREER Award