Respiratory viral infections follow an unpredictable clinical course in young children ranging from a common cold to respiratory failure. The transition from mild to severe disease occurs rapidly and is difficult to predict. The pathophysiology underlying disease severity has remained elusive. There is an urgent need to better understand the immune response in this disease to come up with biomarkers that may aid clinical decision making. In a prospective study, flow cytometric and genome-wide gene expression analyses were performed on blood samples of 26 children with a diagnosis of severe, moderate or mild Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) infection. Differentially expressed genes were validated using Q-PCR in a second cohort of 80 children during three consecutive winter seasons. FACS analyses were also performed in the second cohort and on recovery samples of severe cases in the first cohort. Severe RSV infection was associated with a transient but marked decrease in CD4+ T, CD8+ T, and NK cells in peripheral blood. Gene expression analyses in both cohorts identified Olfactomedin4 (OLFM4) as a fully discriminative marker between children with mild and severe RSV infection, giving a PAM cross-validation error of 0%. Patients with an OLFM4 gene expression level above -7.5 were 6 times more likely to develop severe disease, after correction for age at hospitalization and gestational age. In conclusion, by combining genome-wide expression profiling of blood cell subsets with clinically well-annotated samples, OLFM4 was identified as a biomarker for severity of pediatric RSV infection.
Olfactomedin 4 Serves as a Marker for Disease Severity in Pediatric Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) Infection.
Specimen part, Disease
View SamplesIn the present study, we studied chronic HCV patients who responded to IFN-based therapy as evidenced by absence of HCV RNA at the end of treatment, and focused on two issues that have not received much attention. Firstly, we evaluated whether specific genes or gene expression patterns in blood were able to distinguish responder patients with a viral relapse from responder patients who remained virus-negative after cessation of treatment. We found that chronic HCV patients who were sustained responders and relapsers to IFN-based therapy showed comparable baseline clinical parameters and immune composition in blood. However, at baseline, the gene expression profiles of a set of 18 genes predicted treatment outcome with an accuracy of 94%. Secondly, we examined whether patients with successful therapy-induced clearance of HCV still exhibited gene expression patterns characteristic for HCV, or whether normalization of their transcriptome was observed. We observed that the relatively high expression of IFN-stimulated genes (ISG) in chronic HCV patients prior to therapy was reduced after successful IFN-based antiviral therapy (at 24 weeks follow-up). These ISG included CXCL10, OAS1, IFI6, DDX60, TRIM5 and STAT1. In addition, 1428 differentially expressed non-ISG genes were identified in paired pre- and post-treatment samples from sustained responders, which included genes involved in TGF- signaling, apoptosis, autophagy, and nucleic acid and protein metabolism. Interestingly, 1424 genes were identified with altered expression in responder patients after viral eradication in comparison to normal expression levels in healthy individuals. Additionally, aberrant expression of a subset of these genes, including IL-32, IL-16, CCND3 and RASSF1, was also observed at baseline. Our findings indicate that successful antiviral therapy of chronic HCV patients does not lead to normalization of their blood transcriptional signature. The altered transcriptional activity may reflect HCV-induced liver damage in previously infected individuals.
Gene expression profiling to predict and assess the consequences of therapy-induced virus eradication in chronic hepatitis C virus infection.
Sex, Specimen part, Disease, Race
View SamplesTo obtain a separation of the epidermal and dermal compartments in order to examine compartment specific biological mechanisms in the skin we incubated 4 mm human skin punch biopsies in ammonium thiocyanate (NH4SCN). We wanted to test 1) the histological quality of the dermo-epidermal separation obtained by different incubation times 2) the amount and quality of extractable epidermal RNA, and 3) its impact on sample RNA expression profiles assessed by large-scale gene expression microarray analysis in both normal and inflamed skin. At 30 minutes incubation, the split between dermis and epidermis was not always histologically well-defined (i.e. occurred partly intra-epidermally) but varied between subjects. Consequently, curettage along the dermal surface of the biopsy was added to the procedure. This modified method resulted in an almost perfect separation of the epidermal and dermal compartments and satisfactory amounts of high-quality RNA were obtained. Hybridization to Affymetrix HG_U133A 2.0 GeneChips showed that ammonium thiocyanate incubation had a minute effect on gene expression resulting in only one significantly downregulated gene (cystatin E/M). We conclude that epidermis can be reproducibly and almost completely separated from the dermis of 4 mm skin biopsies by 30 min incubation in 3.8% ammonium thiocyanate combined with curettage of the dermal surface, producing high-quality RNA suitable for transcriptional analysis. Our refined method of dermo-epidermal separation will undoubtedly prove valuable in the many different settings, where the epidermal and dermal compartments need to be evaluated separately.
Extraction of high-quality epidermal RNA after ammonium thiocyanate-induced dermo-epidermal separation of 4 mm human skin biopsies.
Specimen part, Subject
View SamplesSequencing of 5' ends of RNA molecules from control and exosome-depleted HeLa-S3 cells. Overall design: CAGE library construction from RNA extracted from control and exosome-depleted cells.
Nuclear stability and transcriptional directionality separate functionally distinct RNA species.
No sample metadata fields
View SamplesIn order to gain insight into relative stability of transcripts in plants that lacked m6A, we performed global mapping of uncapped and cleaved transcripts Overall design: 2 replicates of GMUCT in Arabidopsis thaliana ecotype Col-0 ABI3:MTA (mta) plants. genome-wide mapping of uncapped and cleaved transcripts (GMUCT)
N<sup>6</sup>-Methyladenosine Inhibits Local Ribonucleolytic Cleavage to Stabilize mRNAs in Arabidopsis.
Specimen part, Subject
View SamplesClassical regeneration experiments in insects have demonstrated an important role for imaginal tissues (also called discs, the larval tissues that give rise to the adult appendages) in coupling tissue growth, maturation and patterning during development We used the rotund-Gal4 driver (Rn>) for disc-targeted silencing of the avalanche gene (avl; Rn>avl-RNAi), encoding a syntaxin that functions in the early endocytic machinery (H. Lu, D. Bilder, Nat Cell Biol 7, 1232; Dec, 2005). Rn>avl-RNAi discs reach near to normal size after 5 days of development, and then undergo unrestricted neoplastic growth. We were interested in identifying genes showing differential expression profiles in control and in neoplastic growth. We identified dilp8 as one of the most differentially expressed gene in control and Rn>avl-RNAi discs.
Secreted peptide Dilp8 coordinates Drosophila tissue growth with developmental timing.
Specimen part
View SamplesWe used microarrays to assess differences in gene expression associated with single nucleotide polymorphisms occurred in three genes, PMA1, MDS3 and MKT1, as compared to a reference strain devoid of any mutations (Progenitor strain).
Cellular effects and epistasis among three determinants of adaptation in experimental populations of Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
No sample metadata fields
View SamplesRNA-seq with male and female juvenile and adult spinal cords Overall design: RNA was isolated from 4 week and 8 week spinal cords for sequencing
Age and Sex-Related Changes to Gene Expression in the Mouse Spinal Cord.
Sex, Age, Specimen part, Cell line, Subject
View SamplesThe purpose of this experiment was to identify oestrogen regulated genes in human primary cell cultures of neuronal and glial cells modelling the developing human nervous system. We were especially interested in genes involved in proliferation, differentiation and migration of neuronal cells and genes involved in or linked to neurodegenerative diseases. We have therefore assessed gene expression changes, using Affymetrix GeneChips (HG-U133A), of oestrogen treated human neuronal/ glial cell cultures. We continued with 14 selected genes and confirmed the gene expression changes, by relative quantitative real time PCR, of 6 genes (p< 0.05) important in neuronal development, three of which also are suggested to have links to neurodegenerative diseases.
Transcriptional analysis of estrogen effects in human embryonic neurons and glial cells.
No sample metadata fields
View SamplesThis SuperSeries is composed of the SubSeries listed below.
Cell-Cycle-Targeting MicroRNAs as Therapeutic Tools against Refractory Cancers.
Specimen part, Cell line
View Samples