Associate Professor in Comparative Biosciences
jjwatters@wisc.edu
608/262-1016
4470 Veterinary Medicine Building
Research Interests:Signal transduction pathways in microglia in response to estrogens and extracellular adenine nucleotides that modulate their production of neurotoxic inflammatory mediators.
Research
Our research interests are in the signal transduction mechanisms governing microglial cell responses to extracellular adenine nucleotides and estrogens, agents that our data suggest may exert neuroprotective effects in the brain following several types of neurotoxic injuries. The role of the MAP kinase pathways in controlling microglial cell production of inflammatory mediators and how hypoxia and/or reoxygenation injury alters their signaling responses to purinergic receptor activation are of primary interest.
Publications
- Nikodemova, M. and Watters, J.J. 2012 Efficient Isolation of Live Microglia with Preserved Phenotypes from Adult Mouse Brain. J. Neuroinflammation. 9:147.
- Nikodemova, M. and Watters, J.J. 2011 Outbred ICR/CD1 mice display more severe neuroinflammation mediated by microglial TLR4/CD14 activation than inbred C57Bl/6 mice. Neuroscience. 190:67-74
- Friedle, S.A., Nikodemova, M., Wright, M.L. and Watters, J.J. 2011 The P2X7-Egr Pathway Regulates Nucleotide-Dependent Inflammatory Gene Expression in Microglia. Glia. 59(1):1-13.
- Crain, J.M., Nikodemova, M. and Watters, J.J. 2009 Purinergic receptor expression varies with age and sex in freshly isolated brain microglia. J. Neuroinflammation, 6(1):24.
- Brautigam, V.M., Dubyak, G.R., Crain, J.M. and Watters, J.J. 2008 The inflammatory effects of UDP-Glucose in N9 microglia are not mediated by P2Y14 receptor activation. Purinergic Signaling, 4:73-78.