{"id":5,"date":"2025-10-10T02:17:04","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T02:17:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.caolaboratory.org.cn\/about\/"},"modified":"2025-11-05T01:08:50","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T01:08:50","slug":"about","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.caolaboratory.org.cn\/?page_id=5","title":{"rendered":"Research"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Research Description<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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In On the Origin of Species, Darwin introduced the pivotal concept of “survival of the fittest.” The key to such survival lies in successfully responding to existential threats. At the microscopic level, the primary threats are pathogenic microorganisms. These can invade the digestive and respiratory tracts of humans and animals, triggering a series of pathological defense responses, such as nausea and vomiting. At the macroscopic level, the main threats are predators. When facing predatory threats, humans and animals exhibit a range of physiological defense responses, such as fight and flight. How the brain perceives these survival threats across different scales and initiates appropriate defense responses is a significant scientific question in the field of neuroscience. Using mice as an animal model, our laboratory has investigated the neural mechanisms through which the brain initiates nausea and vomiting at the microscopic scale, and the mechanisms underlying fight and flight responses at the macroscopic scale.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Research Focus 1: Neural Mechanisms of Pathogen Sensing and Initiation of Defense Responses by the Brain.<\/h5>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Nausea and vomiting induced by food poisoning are defensive responses through which the body protects itself, holding significant importance for survival. They are also major side effects of cancer chemotherapy, carrying substantial clinical relevance. Over the past three decades, research into the mechanisms of nausea and vomiting has faced considerable challenges, primarily due to the lack of suitable animal models and research paradigms in the field.<\/p>

On November 1, 2022, we published a research paper titled “The gut-to-brain axis for toxin-induced defensive responses” in Cell. This study established a novel paradigm using mice as an animal model to investigate nausea and vomiting responses. It identified intestinal “sentinel” cells that report pathogen invasion, vagal nerve “relay” cells that transmit this information, and “switch” cells in the brain responsible for initiating nausea and vomiting responses. At the molecular and cellular level, the study revealed the critical roles of immune responses and serotonin signaling in triggering nausea and vomiting, demonstrating that chemotherapy drugs induce these side effects by “hijacking” these molecular and cellular mechanisms. The research further found that these molecular, cellular, and neural circuit mechanisms are also involved in the nausea and vomiting side effects induced by the chemotherapy drug doxorubicin. This discovery suggests that chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting may result from the hijacking of evolutionarily conserved “food poisoning” mechanisms.<\/p>

The same issue of Cell included an expert commentary article that provided a detailed introduction to this work. The research findings were also featured as a Research Highlight in Nature Reviews Neuroscience. Additionally, The New York Times conducted an interview and reported on this study.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Research Focus 2: Neural Mechanisms of Brain Perception of Predator Threats Initiating Fight-or-Flight Responses<\/h5>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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When facing survival threats (such as predators), humans and animals can exhibit a “fight-or-flight” behavioral response. Wu Song defeating the tiger in Water Margin serves as a vivid example of this process. In some populations, excessive or repeated fight-or-flight responses can trigger a type of mental disorder known as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). To uncover the pathogenesis of such diseases, it is often necessary to start from the source. Analyzing the key neural circuits underlying the fight-and-flight responses may represent a breakthrough for in-depth investigation into the mechanisms of PTSD. In recent years, we have achieved a series of research findings in this direction.<\/p>

In the laboratory, we established a behavioral paradigm for mice to “fight” against predators and discovered that the nociceptive mechanical stimuli generated during predator attacks are key to triggering fighting behavior in mice. We identified neurons in the anterior hypothalamic nucleus (AHN) of mice that encode these nociceptive mechanical stimuli. Optogenetic activation of these neurons can directly elicit defensive behavior against predators in mice. Inhibiting these neurons causes mice to lose the ability to resist predators. This research was published in Nature Neuroscience on January 3, 2022.<\/p>

How does the brain initiate the “flight” behavioral response? We discovered a group of neurons in the mouse brain that initiate escape behavior from predators. These neurons are located in a brain region called the superior colliculus and are marked by the biomarker parvalbumin (PV). The superior colliculus PV neurons can function like radar, monitoring rapidly approaching aerial predators and relaying this warning information to the amygdala, the fear center. Direct stimulation of this neural circuit can rapidly trigger intense escape behavior. Repeated stimulation of this neural circuit leads to the emergence of core symptoms similar to PTSD in animals. These scientific findings were published in Science on June 26, 2015.<\/p>

The above research findings on the neural mechanisms of fight-and-flight responses provide an important foundation for further in-depth studies on the pathogenesis of PTSD.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Research Description […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","site-sidebar-layout":"no-sidebar","site-content-layout":"page-builder","ast-site-content-layout":"full-width-container","site-content-style":"unboxed","site-sidebar-style":"unboxed","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"disabled","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"disabled","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"enabled","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-5","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"lili","author_link":"https:\/\/www.caolaboratory.org.cn\/?author=1"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Research Description […]","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caolaboratory.org.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caolaboratory.org.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caolaboratory.org.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caolaboratory.org.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caolaboratory.org.cn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5"}],"version-history":[{"count":93,"href":"https:\/\/www.caolaboratory.org.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3624,"href":"https:\/\/www.caolaboratory.org.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5\/revisions\/3624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caolaboratory.org.cn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}