Next Generation Sequencing Facilitates Quantitative Analysis of Wild Type and miR-211-/- Whole Eye Transcriptomes

Purpose: Next-generation sequencing (NGS) has revolutionized systems-based analysis of cellular pathways. The goals of this study are to compare NGS transcriptome profiling (RNA-seq) from whole eye, after removal of the lens and cornea from 1-2 month old miR-211-/- mice and compare it with wt mice Methods: Whole eye (after removal of the lens and cornea) mRNA profiles of 1-2 month old wild-type (WT) and neural miR-211-/-mice were generated by deep sequencing, in multiple biological replicates, five for WT and six for miR-211-/- animals, using Illumina GAIIx. The sequence reads that passed quality filters were analyzed at the transcript isoform level with two methods: Burrows–Wheeler Aligner (BWA) followed by ANOVA (ANOVA) and TopHat followed by Cufflinks. qRT–PCR validation was performed using TaqMan and SYBR Green assays RNA-Seq libraries were prepared from whole eye, after removal of the lens and cornea from miR-211-/- mice. Results: Each library was sequenced using 100 bp paired-end sequencing on the Illumina HiSeq 1000 system. Gene abundances from RNA-Seq data were quantified using RSEM45. Using an optimized data analysis workflow, we mapped about 30 million sequence reads per sample to the mouse genome. This approach yielded read count values for a total of 38253 mouse genes annotated in GenCode. We only considered genes that had at least 1 count per million in at least five out of 11 samples as expressed, yielding a total of 15590 genes. Next we performed differential gene expression analysis to determine the transcriptional effects of miR-211 deletion. This analysis yielded a total of 63 genes that were differentially expressed with a False Discovery Rate (FDR) <0.1 (Fig. 4). Of these, the expression levels of 61 genes were significantly decreased upon miR-211 deletion, while only 2 genes were upregulated. Conclusions: Our study represents the first detailed analysis of whole eye transcriptomes, with biologic replicates, generated by RNA-seq technology on miR-211-/-. Overall design: Whole eye (after removal of the lens and cornea) mRNA profiles of 1-2 month old wild-type (WT) and neural miR-211-/-mice were generated by deep sequencing, in multiple biological replicates, five for WT and six for miR-211-/- animals, using Illumina GAIIx.

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Barbato S, Marrocco E, Intartaglia D, Pizzo M, Asteriti S, Naso F, Falanga D, Bhat RS, Meola N, Carissimo A, Karali M, Prosser HM, Cangiano L, Surace EM, Banfi S, Conte I