Myotonic Dystrophy Type-2 (DM2) is an autosomal dominant disease caused by the expansion of a CCTG tetraplet repeat. It is a multisystemic disorder, affecting skeletal muscles, the heart, the eye, the central nervous system and the endocrine system.
Genome wide identification of aberrant alternative splicing events in myotonic dystrophy type 2.
Sex, Age, Specimen part, Disease, Disease stage
View SamplesA deficiency of pejvakin, a protein of unknown function, causes a strikingly heterogeneous form of deafness. Pejvakin-deficient (Pjvk-/-) mice also exhibited variable auditory phenotypes. Correlation between their hearing thresholds and the number of pups per cage suggested a possible harmful effect of pup vocalizations. Direct sound or electrical stimulation showed that the cochlear sensory hair cells and auditory pathway neurons of Pjvk-/- mice and patients were exceptionally vulnerable to sound. Pjvk-/- cochleas displayed features of marked oxidative stress and impaired anti-oxidant defenses. We showed that pejvakin is associated with peroxisomes, and is required for the oxidative stress-induced proliferation of these organelles. In Pjvk-/- hair cells, peroxisomes displayed structural abnormalities after the onset of hearing. Noise-exposure of wild-type mice rapidly upregulated Pjvk cochlear transcription, and triggered peroxisome proliferation in hair cells and primary auditory neurons. Our results reveal that the anti-oxidant activity of peroxisomes protects the auditory system against noise-induced damage.
Hypervulnerability to Sound Exposure through Impaired Adaptive Proliferation of Peroxisomes.
Specimen part
View SamplesProtein synthesis belongs to the most energy consuming processes in the cell. Lowering oxygen tension below normal (hypoxia) causes a rapid inhibition of global mRNA translation due to the decreased availability of energy. Interestingly, subsets of mRNAs pursue active translation under such circumstances. In human fibrosarcoma cells (HT1080) exposed to prolonged hypoxia (36 h, 1% oxygen) we observed that transcripts are either increasingly or decreasingly associated with ribosomes localized at the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). In a global setting it turned out that only 31% of transcripts showing elevated total-RNA levels were also increasingly present at the ER in hypoxia. These genes, regulated by its expression as well as its ER-localization, belong to the gene ontologys hypoxia response, glycolysis and HIF-1 transcription factor network supporting the view of active mRNA translation at the ER during hypoxia. Interestingly, a large group of RNAs was found to be unchanged at the expression level, but translocate to the ER in hypoxia. Among these are transcripts encoding translation factors and >180 ncRNAs. In summary, we provide evidence that protein synthesis is favoured at the ER and, thus, partitioning of the transcriptome between cytoplasmic and ER associated ribosomes mediates adaptation of gene expression in hypoxia.
Hypoxia-induced gene expression results from selective mRNA partitioning to the endoplasmic reticulum.
Specimen part, Cell line
View SamplesWe used microarray analysis to investigate if keratinocytes excert an immuno-inflammatory response towards streptococcal M1 protein.
Vigilant keratinocytes trigger pathogen-associated molecular pattern signaling in response to streptococcal M1 protein.
Specimen part, Cell line
View SamplesPerilipin A (PeriA) exclusively locates on adipocyte lipid droplets and is essential for lipid storage and lipolysis. Adipocyte specific overexpression of PeriA caused resistance to diet-induced obesity and resulted in improved insulin sensitivity. In order to better understand the biological basis for this observed phenotype we performed DNA microarray analysis on white adipose tissue (WAT) from PeriA transgenic (Tg) and control wildtype (WT) mice.
Perilipin overexpression in white adipose tissue induces a brown fat-like phenotype.
Sex, Specimen part
View SamplesWe adopted a transcriptome-wide microarray analysis approach to determine the extent to which vascular gene expression is altered as a result of juvenile obesity and identify obesity-responsive mRNAs. We examined transcriptional profiles in the left anterior descending coronary artery (LAD), perivascular fat adjacent to the LAD, and descending thoracic aorta between obese (n=5) and lean (n=6) juvenile Ossabaw pigs (age=22 weeks). Obesity was experimentally induced by feeding the animals a high-fat/high fructose corn syrup/high-cholesterol diet for 16 weeks. We found that expression of 189 vascular cell genes in the LAD and expression of 165 genes in the thoracic aorta were altered with juvenile obesity (FDR10%) with an overlap of only 28 genes between both arteries. Notably, a number of genes found to be markedly up-regulated in the LAD of obese pigs are implicated in atherosclerosis, including ACP5, LYZ, CXCL14, APOE, PLA2G7, LGALS3, SPP1, ITGB2, CYBB, and P2RY12. Furthermore, pathway analysis revealed the induction of pro-inflammatory and pro-oxidant pathways with obesity primarily in the LAD. Gene expression in the LAD perivascular fat was minimally altered with juvenile obesity. Together, we provide new evidence that obesity produces artery-specific changes in pre-translational regulation with a clear up-regulation of pro-atherogenic genes in the LAD. Our data may offer potential viable drug targets and mechanistic insights regarding the molecular precursors involved in the origins of over-nutrition and obesity-associated vascular disease. In particular, our results suggest that the oxLDL-LOX-1-NFB signaling axis may be involved in the early initiation of a juvenile obesity-induced pro-atherogenic coronary artery phenotype.
Vascular transcriptional alterations produced by juvenile obesity in Ossabaw swine.
Specimen part
View SamplesWe used Arabidopsis full-genome microarrays to characterize plant transcript accumulations in wild-type plants and pskr1-5 mutants, 3 days after water treatment and inoculation with the biotrophic oomycete downy mildew pathogen, Hyaloperonospora arabidopsidis.
Evolutionarily distant pathogens require the Arabidopsis phytosulfokine signalling pathway to establish disease.
Specimen part
View SamplesWe used the flu mutant of Arabidopsis and a transgenic line that overexpresses the thylakoid-bound ascorbate peroxidase (tAPX) to address the interactions between different reactive oxygen species (ROS) signaling pathways. The conditional flu mutant of Arabidopsis accumulates excess protochlorophyllide in the dark within chloroplast membranes that upon illumination acts as a photosensitizer and generates singlet oxygen (1O2). Immediately after the release of singlet oxygen rapid changes in nuclear gene expression occur. Distinct sets of genes were activated that were different from those induced by other reactive oxygen species, superoxide or hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), suggesting that different types of active oxygen species activate distinct signaling pathways. It was not known whether the pathways operate separately or interact with each other. We have addressed this problem by modulating noninvasively the level of H2O2 in plastids by means of a transgenic line that overexpresses the thylakoid-bound ascorbate peroxidase (tAPX, line 14/2 PMID: 15165186). In the flu mutant overexpressing tAPX, the expression of most of the nuclear genes that were rapidly activated after the release of 1O2 was significantly higher in flu plants overexpressing tAPX, whereas in wild-type plants, overexpression of tAPX had only a very minor impact on nuclear gene expression. The results suggest that H2O2 antagonizes the 1O2-mediated signaling of stress responses as seen in the flu mutant. This cross-talk between H2O2- and 1O2-dependent signaling pathways might contribute to the overall stability and robustness of wild-type plants exposed to adverse environmental stress conditions.
Cross-talk between singlet oxygen- and hydrogen peroxide-dependent signaling of stress responses in Arabidopsis thaliana.
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View SamplesClimate change and disease have large negative impacts on poultry production, but little is known about the interactions of responses to these stressors in chickens. Fayoumi (heat and disease resistant) and broiler (heat and disease susceptible) chicken lines were stimulated at 22 days of age, using a 2x2x2 factorial design including: breed (Fayoumi or broiler), inflammatory stimulus [lipopolysaccharide (LPS) or saline], and temperature (35°C or 25°C). Transcriptional changes in spleens were analyzed using RNA-sequencing on the Illumina HiSeq 2500. Thirty-two individual cDNA libraries were sequenced (four per treatment) and an average of 22 million reads were generated per library. Stimulation with LPS induced more differentially expressed genes (DEG, log2 fold change = 2 and FDR = 0.05) in the broiler (N=283) than the Fayoumi (N=85), whereas heat treatment resulted in fewer DEG in broiler (N=22) compared to Fayoumi (N=107). The double stimulus of LPS+heat induced the largest numbers of changes in gene expression, for which broiler had 567 DEG and Fayoumi had 1471 DEG of which 399 were shared between breeds. Further analysis of DEG revealed pathways impacted by these stressors such as Remodelling of Epithelial Adherens Junctions due to heat stress, Granulocyte Adhesion and Diapedesis due to LPS, and Hepatic Fibrosis/Hepatic Stellate Cell Activation due to LPS+heat. The genes and pathways identified provide deeper understanding of the response to the applied stressors and may serve as biomarkers for genetic selection for heat and disease tolerant chickens. Overall design: At 22 days of age, divergent chicken breeds (Fayoumi and broiler) were treated with a thermal treatment (heat stress at 35C, or thermoneutral at 25C as a control) for 3.5 hours, then stimulated subcutaneously with an inflammatory stimulus (LPS, or saline as a control) for another 3.5 hours. Chickens were euthanized and spleens were harvested. A total of 32 indivudally coded cDNA libraries were prepared using TruSeq v2 library preparation kit which selects for polyA mRNA. In this 2x2x2 full factorial design with the factors of breed, thermal treatment, and inflammatory stimulus, there were a total of 8 treatment groups. Each treatment group had a total of 4 animal biological replicates. Therefore, a total of 32 individual barcoded samples were sequenced. A total of 8 individually barcoded cDNA libraries were sequenced per lane using the HiSeq Illumina 2500, and we used 4 lanes total. Reads were mapped to Galgal 2.0.
Unique genetic responses revealed in RNA-seq of the spleen of chickens stimulated with lipopolysaccharide and short-term heat.
Subject
View SamplesSle1c is a sublocus of the NZM2410-derived Sle1 major susceptibility locus. We have previously shown that Sle1c contributes to lupus pathogenesis by conferring CD4+ T cell-intrinsic hyperactivation and increased susceptibility to chronic graft-versus-host disease (cGVHD) that mapped to the centromeric portion of the locus. In this study, we have refined the centromeric sublocus to a 675Kb interval, termed Sle1c2. Recombinant congenic strains expressing Sle1c2 exhibited a T cell-intrinsic CD4+ T cell hyperactivation and cGVHD susceptibility, similar to mice with the parental Sle1c.
Murine lupus susceptibility locus Sle1c2 mediates CD4+ T cell activation and maps to estrogen-related receptor γ.
Sex, Age, Specimen part
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