Overview

Welcome to the Jain Lab.  Our mission is to understand development and diseases of the urogenital and nervous systems.  We aim to fill critical gaps in the field and create new knowledge to accelerate path to early diagnoses, management and treatment  of the diseases of the genitourinary system.  A central theme of the lab is to understand the biology of the kidney and lower urinary tract stem cells with particular emphasis on their potential to form diverse cell type and their ability to maintain homeostasis in healthy and disease states in adults.   We hope our work will provide novel insights into engineering these organs for replacement and necessary knowledge to resist and repair injury. 

Research Questions

How do the kidneys form?

How do the kidneys connect to the bladder?

What is the cellular and molecular composition of the kidney and how does it change during development through adulthood in health and disease?

Why do kidneys fail?

How does the nervous system regulate kidney, ureter and bladder development and function?

What is the molecular and cellular diversity in the neuro-uro interactions in homeostasis and disease?

How are the major, minor and rare cell types in the kidney organized and communicate with their neighborhoods to maintain homeostasis in health and disease?

Diseases of Interest

kidney and urinary tract malformations CAKUT

Chronic Kidney Disease CKD

End Stage Kidney Disease ESKD

Acute Kidney Injury AKI

Hypertension

Diabetic Nephropathy

Bladder Pain Syndrome BPS

Overactive Bladder

Interstitial Cystitis

Urinary Tract Infection

Technologies Currently Used to Address Research Questions

Single cell and nucleus sequencing using microfluidics and plate-based FACS-seq

Selective labeling and isolation of small number of neurons projecting to bladder and kidney 

Processing of small amount of human tissue for single cell applications with minimal artifacts.

Inducible genetically engineered mice

Kidney organoids from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC)

Whole exome and genome sequencing

Acute and chronic kidney and bladder injury using surgical, toxins and genetic methods

Multiomics (snRNAseq and snATACseq)

Spatially resolved transcriptomics