In Huntingtons disease (HD), an expanded CAG repeat produces characteristic striatal neurodegeneration. Interestingly, the HD CAG repeat, whose length determines age at onset, undergoes tissue-specific somatic instability, predominant in the striatum, suggesting that tissue-specific CAG length changes could modify the disease process. Therefore, understanding the mechanisms underlying the tissue specificity of somatic instability may provide novel routes to therapies. However progress in this area has been hampered by the lack of sensitive high-throughput instability quantification methods and global approaches to identify the underlying factors.
A novel approach to investigate tissue-specific trinucleotide repeat instability.
Specimen part
View SamplesIn Huntingtons disease (HD), an expanded CAG repeat produces characteristic striatal neurodegeneration. Interestingly, the HD CAG repeat, whose length determines age at onset, undergoes tissue-specific somatic instability, predominant in the striatum, suggesting that tissue-specific CAG length changes could modify the disease process. Therefore, understanding the mechanisms underlying the tissue specificity of somatic instability may provide novel routes to therapies. However progress in this area has been hampered by the lack of sensitive high-throughput instability quantification methods and global approaches to identify the underlying factors.
A novel approach to investigate tissue-specific trinucleotide repeat instability.
Age, Specimen part
View SamplesBoar taint (BT) is an offensive odour or taste observed in pork from a proportion of non-castrated male pigs. Surgical castration is effective in avoiding BT, but animal welfare issues have created an incentive for alternatives such as genomic selection. In order to find candidate biomarkers, gene expression profiles were analysed from tissues of non-castrated pigs grouped by their genetic merit of BT. Differential expression analysis revealed substantial changes with log-transformed fold changes of liver and testis from -3.39 to 2.96 and -7.51 to 3.53, respectively. Co-expression network analysis revealed one module with a correlation of -0.27 in liver and three modules with correlations of 0.31, -0.44 and -0.49 in testis. Differential expression and co-expression analysis revealed candidate biomarkers with varying biological functions: phase I (COQ3, COX6C, CYP2J2, CYP2B6, ACOX2) and phase II metabolism (GSTO1, GSR, FMO3) of skatole and androstenone in liver to steroidgenesis (HSD17B7, HSD17B8, CYP27A1), regulation of steroidgenesis (STARD10, CYB5R3) and GnRH signalling (MAPK3, MAP2K2, MAP3K2) in testis. Overrepresented pathways included “Ribosome”, “Protein export” and “Oxidative phosphorylation” in liver and “Steroid hormone biosynthesis” and “Gap junction” in testis. Future work should evaluate the biomarkers in large populations to ensure their usefulness in genomic selection programs. Overall design: Total RNA was extracted from liver and testis of 48 Danish Landrace pigs with low- medium and high genetic merit of boar taint and sequenced by Illumina HiSeq 2500.
Systems genomics study reveals expression quantitative trait loci, regulator genes and pathways associated with boar taint in pigs.
Specimen part, Subject
View SamplesWe hypothesize that the observed differences in incidences of pleural and peritoneal malignant mesothelioma (MM) are the result of differences in the direct response of these cell types to asbestos rather than to differences mediated by the in vivo microenvironment. To test this hypothesis, we characterized cellular responses to asbestos in a controlled environment using high-throughput RNA sequence and other assays. Overall design: Examination of asbestos-treated versus untreated mesothelial cells from four cell lines representing two tissue types in culture.
Differential Susceptibility of Human Pleural and Peritoneal Mesothelial Cells to Asbestos Exposure.
No sample metadata fields
View SamplesInterleukin (IL)-17 plays an important and protective role in host defence and has been demonstrated to orchestrate airway inflammation by cooperating with and inducing proinflammatory cytokines. Mircoarrays were used to identify immediate-early/ primary response IL-17A-dependent gene transcripts in primary human bronchial ASM cells from mild asthmatic and healthy individuals.
IL-17A mediates a selective gene expression profile in asthmatic human airway smooth muscle cells.
Sex, Age, Specimen part, Treatment, Subject, Time
View SamplesKLF7 null mice show profound axonal growth defects in the olfactory epithelium. The goal of this study was the identification of potential KLF7 target genes in olfactory sensory neurons.
Identification of genes regulated by transcription factor KLF7 in differentiating olfactory sensory neurons.
No sample metadata fields
View SamplesE-cadherin downregulation in cancer cells is associated with epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and metastatic prowess, but the underlying mechanisms are incompletely characterized. In this study, we probed E-cadherin expression at the plasma membrane as a functional assay to identify genes involved in E-cadherin downregulation. The assay was based on the E-cadherin-dependent invasion properties of the intracellular pathogen Listeria monocytogenes. On the basis of a functional readout, automated microscopy and computer-assisted image analysis were used to screen siRNAs targeting 7,000 human genes. The validity of the screen was supported by its definion of several known regulators of E-cadherin expression, including ZEB1, HDAC1 and MMP14. We identified three new regulators (FLASH, CASP7 and PCGF1), the silencing of which was sufficient to restore high levels of E-cadherin transcription. Additionally, we identified two new regulators (FBXL5 and CAV2), the silencing of which
Novel strategies to enforce an epithelial phenotype in mesenchymal cells.
Age, Specimen part, Cell line, Treatment
View SamplesObjective: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic inflammatory demyelinating disease of the central nervous system (CNS), characterized by a global increasing incidence driven by relapsing-remitting disease in females. p38 MAP kinase (MAPK) has been described as a key regulator of inflammatory responses in autoimmunity, but its role in the sexual dimorphism in MS or MS models remains unexplored. Methods: Toward this end, we used experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), the principal animal model of MS, combined with pharmacologic and genetic inhibition of p38 MAPK activity and transcriptomic analyses. Results: Pharmacologic inhibition of p38 MAPK selectively ameliorated EAE in female mice. Conditional deletion studies demonstrated that p38 signaling in macrophages/myeloid cells, but not T cells or dendritic cells, recapitulated this sexual dimorphism. Analysis of CNS inflammatory infiltrates showed that female, but not male mice lacking p38 in myeloid cells exhibited reduced immune cell activation compared with controls, while peripheral T cell priming was unaffected in both sexes. Transcriptomic analyses of myeloid cells revealed differences in p38-controlled transcripts comprising female- and male-specific gene modules, with greater p38 dependence of pro-inflammatory gene expression in females. Interpretation: Our findings demonstrate a key role for p38 in myeloid cells in CNS autoimmunity and uncover important molecular mechanisms underlying sex differences in disease pathogenesis. Taken together, our results suggest that the p38 MAPK signaling pathway represents a novel target for much needed disease modifying therapies for MS
Sex-specific control of central nervous system autoimmunity by p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase signaling in myeloid cells.
Sex, Specimen part
View SamplesAIRmax and AIRmin mouse lines show a differential lung inflammatory response and differential lung tumor susceptibility after urethane treatment, thus constituting a good genetic model to investigate differences in gene expression profiles related to inflammatory response and lung tumor susceptibility. The transcript profile of ~24,000 known genes was analyzed in normal lung tissue of untreated and urethane-treated AIRmax and AIRmin mice. In lungs of untreated mice, inflammation associated genes involved in pathways such as leukocyte transendothelial migration, cell adhesion and tight junctions were differentially expressed in AIRmax versus AIRmin mice. Moreover, gene expression levels differed significantly in urethane-treated mice even at 21 days after treatment. In AIRmin mice, modulation of expression of genes involved in pathways associated with inflammatory response paralleled the previously observed persistent infiltration of inflammatory cells in the lung of these mice. In conclusion, a specific gene expression profile in normal lung tissue is associated with mouse line susceptibility or resistance to lung tumorigenesis and with different inflammatory response, and urethane treatment causes a long-lasting alteration of the lung gene expression profile that correlates with persistent inflammatory response of AIRmin mice.
Transcriptome of normal lung distinguishes mouse lines with different susceptibility to inflammation and to lung tumorigenesis.
Sex, Specimen part
View SamplesGene expression microarrays were used to compare gene alterations induced by exposure to equitoxic doses of crocidolite asbestos and cristobalite silica in an isolate of normal human bronchial epithelial cells.
Indications for distinct pathogenic mechanisms of asbestos and silica through gene expression profiling of the response of lung epithelial cells.
Specimen part
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