Paul Welling
Johns Hopkins University, MD·Physiology
The level of potassium in the blood must stay within narrow limits. Too much or too little disrupts heart rhythm, muscle contraction, nerve signals and hormone release.
- Fields
Physiology
Medicine & Clinical Research
Biochemistry
- Topics
kidney
renal physiology
potassium homeostasis
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jun 2028
What they work on
- Test whether regulated expression of the ROMK potassium channel in the DCT2 and connecting tubule segments controls body potassium balance, using mice in which ROMK can be switched off in specific cell types.
- Determine how the connecting tubule expands as a normal adaptation to high dietary potassium, and test whether Jagged1-Notch1/2 cell-fate signals are required for this remodeling.
- Explore how low potassium activates Kidney Specific WNK1, WNK4 and ERK5 to tag the adaptor protein ARH, which pulls ROMK off the cell surface. Assess how this pathway goes wrong in familial hyperkalemia.
- Provide kidney researchers with mouse-based services to study dietary and social stressors, including humanized diets, kidney and metabolic phenotyping, immunology, a germfree microbiome facility and a biobank of stress models.
More about the research
The kidney keeps potassium in balance by adjusting how much it excretes. Exactly how it senses and responds to potassium levels has long been unclear. The lab studies this question in the ROMK potassium channel and also directs a shared resource lab for mouse studies of how diet and social stress affect the kidney.
Why it matters
Disorders of potassium balance, including common high-potassium conditions and the inherited disease familial hyperkalemia, can disrupt heart rhythm and muscle and nerve function. Revealing how kidney ROMK channels are controlled could point to new drug targets for these disorders. Shared mouse resources for studying diet and social stress could help researchers nationally understand and reduce kidney disease.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Thomas Kleyman
University of Pittsburgh, PA·Physiology
Test whether the delta subunit of the epithelial sodium channel in immune cells drives salt-sensitive hypertension, by transferring dendritic cells and monocytes derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells carrying SCNN1D deletions or mutations into immune-deficient mice.
Nicholas Ferreri
New York Medical College, NY·Physiology
Determine which kidney tubule cells produce the TNF that limits salt-driven blood pressure rises, using mice lacking TNF in the thick ascending limb or distal nephron plus cell-specific TNF-silencing lentiviruses.
Stephanie Mutchler
University of Pittsburgh, PA·Physiology·Early-career
Determine how aldosterone and the mineralocorticoid receptor regulate Piezo1 levels and activity in the distal nephron, using tdTomato-tagged Piezo1 mice, RNAscope, immunostaining and calcium and current recordings from isolated collecting ducts.
The school
Johns Hopkins University: 100 labs on PI Pages, $4.1B a year on research, 622 research doctorates a year.
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