Goal of this study was to assess the levels of protection and investigate cellular, humoral, and mucosal immune correlates on the functional and gene transcriptional levels in elite-controller macaques following high dose SIV challenge.
Rapid SIV Env-specific mucosal and serum antibody induction augments cellular immunity in protecting immunized, elite-controller macaques against high dose heterologous SIV challenge.
Specimen part
View SamplesIn an ongoing translational research program involving microarray-based expression profiles in pediatric septic shock, we have now conducted longitudinal studies focused on the temporal expression profiles of canonical signaling pathways and gene networks. Genome-level expression profiles were generated from whole blood-derived RNA samples of children with septic shock (n = 30 individual patients) corresponding to days 1 and 3 of admission to the pediatric intensive care unit. Based on sequential statistical and expression filters, day 1 and day 3 of septic shock were characterized by differential regulation of 2,142 and 2,504 gene probes, respectively, relative to normal control patients. Venn analysis demonstrated 239 unique genes in the day 1 data set, 598 unique genes in the day 3 data set, and 1,906 genes common to both data sets. Analyses targeted toward derivation of biological function from these data sets demonstrated time-dependent, differential regulation of genes involved in multiple canonical signaling pathways and gene networks primarily related to immunity and inflammation. Notably, multiple and distinct gene networks involving T cell- and MHC antigen-related biological processes were persistently downregulated from day 1 to day 3. Further analyses demonstrated large scale and persistent downregulation of genes corresponding to functional annotations related to zinc homeostasis. These data represent the largest reported cohort of patients with septic shock, which has undergone longitudinal genome-level expression profiling. The data further advance our genome-level understanding of pediatric septic shock and support novel hypotheses that can be readily tested at both the experimental and translational levels.
Genome-level longitudinal expression of signaling pathways and gene networks in pediatric septic shock.
No sample metadata fields
View SamplesGoal of the experiment: To identify correlated genes, pathways and groups of patients with systemic inflammatory response syndrome and septic shock that is indicative of biologically important processes active in these patients.
Genome-level expression profiles in pediatric septic shock indicate a role for altered zinc homeostasis in poor outcome.
No sample metadata fields
View SamplesMultiple signaling pathways, structural proteins and transcription factors are involved in regulation of endothelial barrier function. The Forkhead protein FOXF1 is a key transcriptional regulator of lung embryonic development, and we use a conditional knockout approach to examine the role of FOXF1 in adult lung homeostasis and lung injury and repair. Tamoxifen-regulated deletion of both Foxf1 alleles in endothelial cells of adult mice (Pdgfb-iCreER/Foxf1 caused lung inflammation and edema, leading to respiratory insuffency and uniform mortality. Deletion of a single foxf1 allele was sufficient to increase susceptibility of heterozygous mice to acute lung injury. FOXF1 abundance was decreased in pulmonary endothelial cells of human patients with acute lung injury. Gene expression analysis of pulmonary endothelial cells of FOXF1 deletion indicated reduced expression for genes critical for maintance and regulation of adherens junctions. FOXF1 knockdown in vitro and in vivo disrupted adherens junctions, increased lung endothelial permeability, and the abundance of mRNA and protein for sphingosine 1 phosphate receptor 1 (S1PR1), a key regulator of endothelial barrier function. Chromatin immunoprecipitation and luciferase reporter assay demonstrated that FOXF1 directly bound to and induced the tanscriptional activity of the S1pr1 promoter. Pharmacological administratiion of S1P to injured pdgfb-iCreER/Foxf1 mice restored endothelial barrier function, decreased lung edema and improved survival. Thus, FOXF1 promotes normal lung homeostasis and lung repair, at least in part, by enhancing endothelial barrier function through transcriptional activation of the S1P/S1PR1/ signaling pathway. Overall design: RNA was isolated and pooled from the lungs of multiple mice with either the Foxf1 floxed alleles alone or Pdgfb-iCreER Foxf1 floxed mice.
FOXF1 maintains endothelial barrier function and prevents edema after lung injury.
Specimen part, Subject
View SamplesHepatic fibrosis is the common end stage to a variety of chronic liver injuries and is characterized by an excessive deposition of extracellular matrix (ECM), which disrupts the liver architecture and impairs liver function. The fibrous lesions are produced by myofibroblasts, which differentiate from hepatic stellate cells (HSC). The myofibroblasts transcriptional networks remain poorly characterized. Previous studies have shown that the Forkhead box F1 (FOXF1) transcription factor is expressed in HSCs and stimulates their activation during acute liver injury; however, the role of FOXF1 in the progression of hepatic fibrosis is unknown. In the present study, we generated aSMACreER;Foxf1fl/fl mice to conditionally inactivate Foxf1 in myofibroblasts during carbon tetrachloride-mediated liver fibrosis. Foxf1 deletion increased collagen depositions and disrupted liver architecture. Timp2 expression was significantly increased in Foxf1-deficient mice while MMP9 activity was reduced. RNA sequencing of purified liver myofibroblasts demonstrated that FOXF1 inhibits expression of pro-fibrotic genes, Col1a2, Col5a2, and Mmp2 in fibrotic livers and binds to active repressors located in promotors and introns of these genes. Overexpression of FOXF1 inhibits Col1a2, Col5a2, and MMP2 in primary murine HSCs in vitro. Altogether, FOXF1 prevents aberrant ECM depositions during hepatic fibrosis by repressing pro-fibrotic gene transcription in myofibroblasts and HSCs. Overall design: RNAseq on isolated hepatic stromal cells from Foxf1 fl/fl and aSMACreER;Foxf1 fl/fl mice after 5 weeks of carbon tetrachloride-induced liver injury.
The Forkhead box F1 transcription factor inhibits collagen deposition and accumulation of myofibroblasts during liver fibrosis.
Specimen part, Cell line, Subject
View SamplesTranscription factor FoxM1 is expressed in proliferating cells, and its expression is critical for cell proliferation in embryos and tumors. FoxM1 regulates a multi-gene transcriptional network for cell cycle regulation.
Forkhead box M1 transcriptional factor is required for smooth muscle cells during embryonic development of blood vessels and esophagus.
Specimen part
View SamplesSmall RNAs (21-24 nt) are pivotal regulators of gene expression that guide both transcriptional and post-transcriptional silencing mechanisms in diverse eukaryotes, including most if not all plants. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) and short interfering RNAs (siRNAs) are the two major types, both of which have a demonstrated and important role in plant development, stress responses and pathogen resistance. In this work, we used a deep sequencing approach (Sequencing-By-Synthesis, or SBS) to develop sequence resources of small RNAs from different maize tissues (including leaves, ears and tassels) collected from wild-type plants of the B73 variety. The high depth of the resulting datasets enabled us to examine in detail critical small RNA features as size distribution, tissue-specific regulation and sequence conservation between different organs in this species. We also developed database resources and a dedicated website (http://smallrna.udel.edu/) with computational tools for allowing other users to identify new miRNAs or siRNAs involved in specific regulatory pathways, verify the degree of conservation of these sequences in other plant species and map small RNAs on genes or larger regions of the maize genome under study. Overall design: Small RNA libraries were derived from leaves, ears and tassels of maize variety B73 (wild-type). Plants were grown in a flood irrigated plot at the University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ, USA) in 2007 and organs were pooled from several plants for each library. Young leaves were collected from 6-weeks-old seedlings. Post-meiotic immature ears were harvested from 10- and 11-week old plants while pre-meiotic tassels were collected from 8-week old plants. Total RNA was isolated using the Plant RNA Purification Reagent (Invitrogen) and submitted to Illumina (Hayward, CA, http://www.illumina.com) for small RNA library construction using approaches described in (Lu et al., 2007) with minor modifications. The small RNA libraries were sequenced with the Sequencing-By-Synthesis (SBS) technology by Illumina. PERL scripts were designed to remove the adapter sequences and determine the abundance of each distinct small RNA. We thank Lyudmila Sidorenko and Vicki Chandler for providing the plant material and Kan Nobuta for assistance with the computational methods.
Detailed analysis of a contiguous 22-Mb region of the maize genome.
Subject
View SamplesA multi-subunit exosome complex is a major eukaryotic exoribonuclease that in the cytoplasm requires the SKI complex for activity. In yeast, SKI forms a heterotetramer and delivers RNA substrates directly into the exosome channel. Such cooperation requires Ski7 protein, which links the exosome and SKI complexes. However, since the human genome does not encode an orthologue of the yeast Ski7, the factor mediating SKI and exosome linkage in human cells is unknown. Proteomic analysis revealed that the human cytoplasmic exosome interacts with HBS1LV3, a protein encoded by a newly discovered short splicing isoform of HBS1L. HBS1LV3 recruits the SKI complex to the exosome. In contrast, the canonical HBS1L variant, HBS1LV1, acting as a ribosome dissociation factor, does not associate with the exosome and instead interacts with the mRNA surveillance factor PELOTA. HBS1LV3 contains a new domain of unknown structure with the short linear motif RxxxFxxxL, which is responsible for exosome binding, and may interact with the exosome core subunit RRP43 in way that resembles the association between Rrp6 RNase and Rrp43 in yeast. Depletion of HBS1LV3 and the SKI complex helicase SKI2W similarly affected the transcriptome by strongly upregulating a large number of genes. Moreover, following HBS1LV3 or SKI2W depletion the half-lives of representative upregulated mRNAs were increased, thus supporting the involvement of HBS1LV3 and SKI2W in the same mRNA degradation pathway. In contrast, HBS1LV1 depletion had little effect on transcriptome homeostasis. Our data indicate that human HBS1LV3 is the long-sought factor that links the exosome and SKI complexes to regulate cytoplasmic mRNA decay. Overall design: Examination of siRNA-mediated silencing in HEK293 cell lines. To identify transcripts that are degraded by cytoplasmic SKI/HBS1LV3/exosome supercomplexes, we used specific siRNAs to knock down HBS1LV1, HBS1LV3 or SKIV2L gene expression in (i) WT HEK293 cells and (ii) HEK293 cells rescued with siRNA insensitive protein. Analyses were performed in triplicate.
A short splicing isoform of HBS1L links the cytoplasmic exosome and SKI complexes in humans.
No sample metadata fields
View SamplesWe generated single-cell transcriptomes from a large number of single cells using several commercially available platforms, in both microliter and nanoliter volumes, and compared performance between them. We benchmarked each method to conventional RNA-seq of the same sample using bulk total RNA, as well as to multiplexed qPCR, which is the current gold standard for quantitative single-cell gene expression analysis. In doing so, we were able to systematically evaluate the sensitivity, precision, and accuracy of various approaches to single-cell RNA-seq. Our results show that it is possible to use single-cell RNA-seq to perform quantitative transcriptome measurements of individual cells, that it is possible to obtain quantitative and accurate gene expression measurements with a relatively small number of sequencing reads, and that when such measurements are performed on large numbers of cells, one can recapitulate the bulk transcriptome complexity, and the distributions of gene expression levels found by single-cell qPCR. Overall design: 109 single-cell human transcriptomes were analyzed in total; 96 using nanoliter volume sample processing on a microfluidic platform, Nextera library prep (biological replicates); 3 using the SMARTer cDNA synthesis kit, Nextera library prep (biological replicates); 3 using the Transplex cDNA synthesis kit, Nextera library prep (biological replicates); 7 using the Ovation Nugen cDNA synthesis kit (biological replicates) where 3 used Nextera library prep and 4 used NEBNext library prep. In addition, 4 bulk RNA samples were sequenced: bulk RNA generated using ~1 million pooled cells was used to make bulk libraries, 2 of which were made using SMARTer cDNA synthesis kit (technical replicates) and 2 made using Superscript RT kit with no amplification (technical replicates). All 4 bulk samples were made into libraries using Nextera.
Quantitative assessment of single-cell RNA-sequencing methods.
No sample metadata fields
View SamplesGermline nuclear RNAi in C. elegans is a transgenerational gene-silencing pathway that leads to the H3K9 trimethylation (H3K9me3) response and transcriptional repression of target genes. The H3K9me3 response induced either by exogenous dsRNA or endogenous siRNA (endo-siRNA) is highly specific to the target loci and transgenerationally heritable. Despite these features, the role of H3K9me3 in transcriptional repression and heritable gene silencing at native target genes has not been tested. To resolve this gap, we first determined that the combined activities of three H3K9 histone methyltransferases (HMTs), MET-2, SET-25, and SET-32, are responsible for virtually all of the detectable level of germline nuclear RNAi-dependent H3K9me3 at native genes, triggered either by exogenous dsRNA or endo-siRNAs. By performing RNA Polymerase II ChIP-seq and pre-mRNA-seq analyses, we found that the loss of the H3K9me3 response at germline nuclear RNAi targets in the met-2;set-25;set-32 mutant does not lead to any defect in transcriptional repression or heritable RNAi. Therefore, H3K9me3 is not required for exogenous dsRNA-induced heritable RNAi or the maintenance of endo siRNA-mediated transcriptional silencing in C. elegans germline. This study provides a unique paradigm in which transcriptional silencing and heterochromatin, triggered by the same upstream pathway, can be decoupled. Overall design: In this study we tested if RNAi-mediated H3K9me3 is required for the heritable RNAi and transcriptional silencing at native endogenous and exogenous RNAi targets. Using genetic approach we generated nearly completely deficient H3K9me3 worm strain (met-2;set-25;set-32). Using Pol II ChIP-seq, pre-mRNA-seq and mRNA-seq we validated transcriptional changes at the endogenous targets in the H3K9me3 deficient condition (met-2;set-25;set-32). We performed oma-1 dsRNA feeding and heritable RNAi experiment and using H3K9me3 ChIP-seq measured level of RNAi-triggered H3K9me3 contribution by set-32 or met-2;set-25 or met-2;set-25;set-32 HMTs at the oma-1 gene. Using oma-1 mRNA and pre-mRNA qRT-PCR we tested heritable RNAi effect at oma-1 genomic locus in these HMT mutants.
Decoupling the downstream effects of germline nuclear RNAi reveals that H3K9me3 is dispensable for heritable RNAi and the maintenance of endogenous siRNA-mediated transcriptional silencing in <i>Caenorhabditis elegans</i>.
Subject
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