Multiple 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 SamplesGoal 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 SamplesImmune memory cells are poised to rapidly expand and elaborate effector functions upon reinfection. However, despite heightened readiness to respond, memory cells exist in a functionally quiescent state. The paradigm is that memory cells remain inactive due to lack of TCR stimuli. Here we report a unique role of Tregs in orchestrating memory quiescence by inhibiting effector and proliferation programs through CTLA-4. Loss of Tregs resulted in activation of genome-wide transcriptional programs characteristic of potent effectors, and both developing and established memory quickly reverted to a terminally differentiated (KLRG-1hi/IL-7Rlo/GzmBhi) phenotype, with compromised metabolic fitness, longevity, polyfunctionality and protective efficacy. CTLA-4, an inhibitory receptor overexpressed on Tregs, functionally replaced Tregs in trans to rescue Treg-less memory defects and restore homeostasis of secondary mediators as well. These studies present CD28-CTLA-4-CD80/CD86 axis as a novel target to potentially accelerate vaccine-induced immunity and improve T-cell memory quality in current cancer immunotherapies proposing transient Treg-depletion.
Quiescence of Memory CD8(+) T Cells Is Mediated by Regulatory T Cells through Inhibitory Receptor CTLA-4.
Specimen part
View SamplesUsing killer cell lectin-like receptor G1 as a marker to distinguish terminal effector cells from memory precursors, we found that despite their diverse cell fates both subsets possessed remarkably similar gene expression profiles and functioned as equally potent killer cells. However, only the memory precursors were capable of making IL-2 thus defining a novel effector cell that was cytotoxic, expressed granzyme B, and produced inflammatory cytokines in addition to IL-2. This effector population then differentiated into long-lived protective memory T cells capable of self-renewal and rapid re-call responses. Mechanistic studies showed that cells that continued to receive antigenic stimulation during the later stages of infection were more likely to become terminal effectors. Importantly, curtailing antigenic stimulation towards the tail-end of the acute infection enhanced the generation of memory cells. These studies support the decreasing potential model of memory differentiation and show that the duration of antigenic stimulation is a critical regulator of memory formation
Functional and genomic profiling of effector CD8 T cell subsets with distinct memory fates.
No sample metadata fields
View SamplesCD25, the high affinity interleukin-2 (IL-2) receptor alpha-chain, is rapidly upregulated by antigen-specific CD8+ T cells after T cell receptor stimulation. We demonstrated that during an acute viral infection, CD25 expression was dynamic, and a subset of virus-specific CD8+ T cells sustained CD25 expression longer than the rest. Examination of the in vivo fate of effector CD8+ T cells exhibiting differential responsiveness to IL-2 revealed that CD25lo cells, which were relatively less sensitive to IL-2, preferentially upregulated CD127 and CD62L and gave rise to the functional long-lived memory pool. In contrast, CD25hi cells that accumulate enhanced IL-2 signals, proliferated more rapidly, were prone to apoptosis, exhibited a more pronounced effector phenotype, and appeared to be terminally differentiated. Sustained IL-2 receptor signaling resulted in increased CD8+ T cell proliferation, higher granzyme B expression and exaggerated contraction after antigen clearance. These data support the hypothesis that prolonged IL-2 signals during priming promote terminal effector differentiation of CD8+ T cells.
Prolonged interleukin-2Ralpha expression on virus-specific CD8+ T cells favors terminal-effector differentiation in vivo.
Specimen part
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 SamplesCD8 T cells normally differentiate from resting nave T cells into function effector and then memory CD8 T cells following acute infections. During chronic viral infections, however, virus-specific CD8 T cells often become exhausted. We used microarrays to examine the gene expression differences between naive, effector, memory and exhausted virus-specific CD8 T cells following lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus infection.
Molecular signature of CD8+ T cell exhaustion during chronic viral infection.
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
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