Hongxiang Liu
University of Georgia, GA·Biology
Taste buds wear out quickly. Their cells live only a short time and cannot divide, so they must be constantly replaced by progenitor cells, immature cells in nearby tissue that mature into new taste cells.
- Fields
Biology
Genetics
Neuroscience
- Topics
taste buds
taste bud progenitors
taste cell renewal
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Map where Sox10-expressing taste bud progenitors sit within von Ebner's salivary glands and define their gene signature, using lineage tracing in Sox10-iCreERT2/tdTomato mice and MERFISH imaging of about 140 marker genes.
- Test whether the transcription factor Sox10 is required for these gland progenitors to become taste bud cells, using conditional Sox10 knockout mice and virus-delivered CRISPR/Cas9 targeting Sox10 in the tongue.
- Test whether proteins released by neural crest-derived connective tissue cells, including Noggin and Pleiotrophin, alter renewal of fungiform taste buds when delivered by hydrogel into the adult mouse tongue tip.
- Test whether products of underlying connective tissue cells regulate circumvallate taste cell differentiation in 3-D organoid cultures, tracking Krt5+ progenitors and Shh+ precursors.
More about the research
If this renewal fails, taste disorders can result. Most past work looked for these progenitors and their control signals in the tongue's outer skin-like layer, the epithelium. This lab's two projects look beyond that layer to tissues underneath. One asks whether minor salivary glands hold a hidden pool of progenitors. The other asks whether the connective tissue under taste buds sends signals that steer renewal. Both use mice.
Why it matters
Taste guides what people choose to eat and how much they want to eat, so taste loss can harm nutrition and quality of life. By finding a new source of taste bud progenitors and the signals that control their maturation, this work could eventually inform treatments for taste disorders caused by failed taste bud renewal. It also gives a fuller picture of how surrounding tissues keep taste buds working.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Bernice E Morrow
Albert Einstein College of Medicine, NY·Genetics
Trace the origins and fates of three cardiac neural crest populations (Tbx2/3, Isl1 and Acta2) in mouse embryos using dual lineage tracing, which labels cells and their descendants, and build gene regulatory networks that control their development.
Anne Nichols
University of Rochester, NY·Physiology·Early-career
Build a spatial and time-course atlas of how GLAST-lineage epitenon progenitors and Scx-expressing tenocytes respond to load. The approach combines genetic lineage tracing in mice with integrated spatial and single-cell RNA sequencing.
Mark Grimes
University of Montana, MT·Biomedical Engineering
Test whether seeding human neural crest stem cells in 3D hydrogel scaffolds with extracellular matrix components identified in organoids makes craniofacial cartilage faster and more reproducibly than self-organizing organoids.
The school
University of Georgia: 27 labs on PI Pages, $628M a year on research, 598 research doctorates a year.
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