scholarly journals Spatially resolved transcriptomics reveals unique gene signatures associated with human temporal cortical architecture and Alzheimer's pathology

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuo Chen ◽  
Yuzhou Chang ◽  
Liangping Li ◽  
Diana Acosta ◽  
Cody Morrison ◽  
...  

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is pathologically characterized by amyloid beta (Aβ) plaques, neurofibrillary tangles (tau aggregates), and alterations in microglia, astrocytes and oligodendrocytes. The mesial temporal lobe is a vulnerable brain region in early AD; however, little is known about the transcriptome-scale gene expression in this region and its relation to AD pathology. Here we use the 10x Genomics Visium platform in combination with co-immunofluorescence staining of AD-associated pathological markers to define the spatial topography of gene expression in the middle temporal gyrus (MTG) from both early AD and age- and gender-matched control cases. We identify unique marker genes for six cortical layers and the adjacent white matter as well as gene expression patterns and alterations that showcase unique gene signatures and pathways associated with a range of AD pathology. Also, gene co-expression analyses of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between AD and controls reveal four unique gene modules, which significantly change their co-expression patterns in the presence of variations of AD pathology. Furthermore, we validate the changes of key representative DEGs that are associated with AD pathology in neurons, microglia, astrocytes and oligodendrocytes using single-molecule fluorescent in situ hybridization. In summary, we provide a rich resource for the spatial transcriptomic profile of the human MTG, which will contribute to our understanding of the complex architecture and AD pathology of this vulnerable brain region.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuo Chen ◽  
Yuzhou Chang ◽  
Liangping Li ◽  
Diana Acosta ◽  
Cody Morrison ◽  
...  

Abstract Human middle temporal gyrus (MTG) is a vulnerable brain region in early Alzheimer's disease (AD); however, little is known about the molecular mechanisms underlying this regional vulnerability. Here we use the 10x Visium platform to define the spatial topography of gene expression in the MTG from both early AD and control cases. We identify differentially expressed genes (DEGs) and enriched pathways that may contribute to the layer-specific vulnerability of AD pathology. Also, gene co-expression analyses reveal four gene modules, which significantly change their co-expression patterns in the presence of variations of AD pathology. Furthermore, we validate the changes of key representative DEGs that are associated with AD pathology using single-molecule fluorescent in situ hybridization. In summary, we provide a rich resource for the spatial transcriptomic profile of the human MTG, which will contribute to our understanding of the complex architecture and AD pathology of this vulnerable brain region.


Blood ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 108 (11) ◽  
pp. 1891-1891
Author(s):  
Sigal Tavor ◽  
Jasmine Jacob-Hirsch ◽  
Manny Eisenbach ◽  
Sigi Kay ◽  
Shoshana Baron ◽  
...  

Abstract Elastase, along with other azurophil granule proteins like proteinase 3 regulates normal and leukemic granulopoiesis in an un-defined mechanism. We have recently showed that human acute myeloid leukemic (AML) cells constitutively express and secrete stromal derived factor 1 (SDF-1) dependent cell surface elastase, which regulates their migration and proliferation. To elucidate the molecular events and genes regulated by elastase and SDF-1/CXCR4 axis in AML cells, we examined gene expression of U937 AML cell line treated with neutralizing anti-CXCR4 Abs or elastase inhibitor (EI) compared to untreated cells, using DNA microarray technology. Unsupervised hierarchical clustering analysis showed very similar gene expression profiles of EI and anti CXCR4 Abs treated cells as compared to control. 230 of 8400 genes interrogated were repressed, and 164 were induced after culturing AML cells in the presence of EI or anti CXCR4 Abs at different time points as compared to untreated cells. Inhibition of elastase or CXCR4 was accompanied by down regulation of the transcripts of primary granule proteins. Functional classification of elastase or SDF-1/CXCR4 axis regulated genes revealed downregulation of HOXA9, HOXA10, ETS2, as well as other transcription factors that are over expressed in AML and are important for the development of leukemia. Whereas, transcriptional factors and regulators known to be induced during myeloid differentiation like C/EBPε, ID1, RUNX3 and HHEX were up-regulated in treated cells. Expression patterns of apoptosis genes indicated decline in death control by the p53 dependent pathway and a more prominent control by mitochondrial mediated apoptotic pathway like bcl2 related genes. In addition, receptors for interleukins, growth factors (G-CSFR and GM-CSF), complement component (C1QR1) were upregulated in the treated cells. In contrast, FLT-3, a growth factor receptor stimulating growth of early progenitor cells and AML blasts, was down regulated in AML cell treated with EI or anti CXCR4 Abs. These data were confirmed by real time PCR for selected marker genes of granulocytic differentiation. Interestingly, many of the differentially expressed genes were common to the transcriptional program of normal terminal granulocytic differentiation (Theilgaard-Monch & Borregarrd 2005. Blood 105:1785) suggesting that inhibition of elastase may induce differentiation in AML cells. Thus we further analyzed the effect of elastase inhibition on AML cell differentiation and growth. Treatment of HL60 AML cell line with EI triggered a proliferative arrest, apoptosis and mimicked terminal granulocytic differentiation, including morphologic changes, increased CD11b expression, and the ability to produce oxidative bursts. In summary, our study showed that inhibition of elastase or SDF-1/CXCR4 axis in AML cells affects similar pathways related to differentiation and malignant transformation, implying a critical role for those molecules in regulating leukemic development. Repression of elastase decreases proliferation and induces differentiation of AML cells, suggesting a potential new therapeutic approach for AML.


2013 ◽  
Vol 95 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 78-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
KAN HE ◽  
ZHEN WANG ◽  
QISHAN WANG ◽  
YUCHUN PAN

SummaryGene expression profiling of peroxisome-proliferator-activated receptor α (PPARα) has been used in several studies, but there were no consistent results on gene expression patterns involved in PPARα activation in genome-wide due to different sample sizes or platforms. Here, we employed two published microarray datasets both PPARα dependent in mouse liver and applied meta-analysis on them to increase the power of the identification of differentially expressed genes and significantly enriched pathways. As a result, we have improved the concordance in identifying many biological mechanisms involved in PPARα activation. We suggest that our analysis not only leads to more identified genes by combining datasets from different resources together, but also provides some novel hepatic tissue-specific marker genes related to PPARα according to our re-analysis.


2008 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 254-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver Seifert ◽  
Ardeshir Bayat ◽  
Robert Geffers ◽  
Kirstin Dienus ◽  
Jan Buer ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kangning Dong ◽  
Shihua Zhang

Recent advances in spatially resolved transcriptomics have enabled comprehensive measurements of gene expression patterns while retaining spatial context of tissue microenvironment. Deciphering the spatial context of spots in a tissue needs to use their spatial information carefully. To this end, we developed a graph attention auto- encoder framework STGATE to accurately identify spatial domains by learning low-dimensional latent embeddings via integrating spatial information and gene expression profiles. To better characterize the spatial similarity at the boundary of spatial domains, STGATE adopts an attention mechanism to adaptively learn the similarity of neighboring spots, and an optional cell type-aware module through integrating the pre-clustering of gene expressions. We validated STGATE on diverse spatial transcriptomics datasets generated by different platforms with different spatial resolutions. STGATE could substantially improve the identification accuracy of spatial domains, and denoise the data while preserving spatial expression patterns. Importantly, STGATE could be extended to multiple consecutive sections for reducing batch effects between sections and extracting 3D expression domains from the reconstructed 3D tissue effectively.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chaohao Gu ◽  
Zhandong Liu

Abstract Spatial gene-expression is a crucial determinant of cell fate and behavior. Recent imaging and sequencing-technology advancements have enabled scientists to develop new tools that use spatial information to measure gene-expression at close to single-cell levels. Yet, while Fluorescence In-situ Hybridization (FISH) can quantify transcript numbers at single-cell resolution, it is limited to a small number of genes. Similarly, slide-seq was designed to measure spatial-expression profiles at the single-cell level but has a relatively low gene-capture rate. And although single-cell RNA-seq enables deep cellular gene-expression profiling, it loses spatial information during sample-collection. These major limitations have stymied these methods’ broader application in the field. To overcome spatio-omics technology’s limitations and better understand spatial patterns at single-cell resolution, we designed a computation algorithm that uses glmSMA to predict cell locations by integrating scRNA-seq data with a spatial-omics reference atlas. We treated cell-mapping as a convex optimization problem by minimizing the differences between cellular-expression profiles and location-expression profiles with an L1 regularization and graph Laplacian based L2 regularization to ensure a sparse and smooth mapping. We validated the mapping results by reconstructing spatial- expression patterns of well-known marker genes in complex tissues, like the mouse cerebellum and hippocampus. We used the biological literature to verify that the reconstructed patterns can recapitulate cell-type and anatomy structures. Our work thus far shows that, together, we can use glmSMA to accurately assign single cells to their original reference-atlas locations.


PeerJ ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. e1814 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keren Maor-Landaw ◽  
Oren Levy

It is well-established that there is a hierarchy of susceptibilities amongst coral genera during heat-stress. However, molecular mechanisms governing these differences are still poorly understood. Here we explored if specific corals possessing different morphologies and different susceptibilities to heat stress may manifest varied gene expression patterns. We examined expression patterns of seven genes in the branching coralsStylophora pistillataandAcropora eurystomaand additionally in the massive robust coral,Poritessp. The tested genes are representatives of key cellular processes occurring during heat-stress in Cnidaria: oxidative stress, ER stress, energy metabolism, DNA repair and apoptosis. Varied response to the heat-stress, in terms of visual coral paling, algal maximum quantum yield and host gene expression was evident in the different growth forms. The two branching corals exhibited similar overall responses that differed from that of the massive coral.A. eurystomathat is considered as a susceptible species did not bleach in our experiment, but tissue sloughing was evident at 34 °C. Interestingly, in this species redox regulation genes were up-regulated at the very onset of the thermal challenge. InS. pistillata, bleaching was evident at 34 °C and most of the stress markers were already up-regulated at 32 °C, either remaining highly expressed or decreasing when temperatures reached 34 °C. The massivePoritesspecies displayed severe bleaching at 32 °C but stress marker genes were only significantly elevated at 34 °C. We postulate that by expelling the algal symbionts fromPoritestissues, oxidation damages are reduced and stress genes are activated only at a progressed stage. The differential gene expression responses exhibited here can be correlated with the literature well-documented hierarchy of susceptibilities amongst coral morphologies and genera in Eilat’s coral reef.


Cartilage ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 194760352090342 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Abdulhadi Alagha ◽  
Judit Vágó ◽  
Éva Katona ◽  
Roland Takács ◽  
Daan van der Veen ◽  
...  

Objective Circadian rhythms in cartilage homeostasis are hypothesized to temporally segregate and synchronize the activities of chondrocytes to different times of the day, and thus may provide an efficient mechanism by which articular cartilage can recover following physical activity. While the circadian clock is clearly involved in chondrocyte homeostasis in health and disease, it is unclear as to what roles it may play during early chondrogenesis. Design The purpose of this study was to determine whether the rhythmic expression of the core circadian clock was detectable at the earliest stages of chondrocyte differentiation, and if so, whether a synchronized expression pattern of chondrogenic transcription factors and developing cartilage matrix constituents was present during cartilage formation. Results Following serum shock, embryonic limb bud–derived chondrifying micromass cultures exhibited synchronized temporal expression patterns of core clock genes involved in the molecular circadian clock. We also observed that chondrogenic marker genes followed a circadian oscillatory pattern. Clock synchronization significantly enhanced cartilage matrix production and elevated SOX9, ACAN, and COL2A1 gene expression. The observed chondrogenesis-promoting effect of the serum shock was likely attributable to its synchronizing effect on the molecular clockwork, as co-application of small molecule modulators (longdaysin and KL001) abolished the stimulating effects on extracellular matrix production and chondrogenic marker gene expression. Conclusions Results from this study suggest that a functional molecular clockwork plays a positive role in tissue homeostasis and histogenesis during early chondrogenesis.


2004 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 150
Author(s):  
A. Lucas-Hahn ◽  
M. Schwarzer ◽  
E. Lemme ◽  
L. Schindler ◽  
H. Niemann

Nuclear transfer facilitates the study of the dedifferentiation process of differentiated somatic cells. Cardiomyocytes are a good model of terminally differentiated cells showing a unique gene expression pattern of cardiac marker genes. The purpose of this study was to test bovine cardiomyocytes as donor cells in nuclear transfer. Cardiomyocytes were isolated from fetal heart muscle (3–5 months of gestation), which were obtained at the abbatoir and immediately perfused with cold Custodiol (Dr. Franz Köhler Chemie, Germany) to reduce metabolism and protect the cells against ischaemia. Subsequently, hearts were perfused with collagenase in Krebs-Henseleit buffer (KHB) to dissociate the tissue and isolate single elongated, contractile cells. For nuclear transfer and fusion the cardiomyocytes were rounded up by exposure to increasing calcium concentrations (2.5–200μM) in the culture medium before the cells were incubated in suspension for 46–48 hours in MEM medium plus 10% FCS. Nuclear transfer was performed as described earlier (Lucas-Hahn et al., 2002, Theriogenology 57, 433). As a control, adult female fibroblasts were employed. Fusion rate, cleavage (day 3 of in vitro culture) and development up to the morula/blastocyst (day 7 of in vitro culture) were recorded and statistically analysed with Student’s t-test. A total of 243 nuclear transfer complexes with cardiomyocytes and 127 with fibroblasts were produced. Fusion rates for cardiomyocyte complexes were significantly (P<0.001) lower (28.8%) compared to fibroblasts (84.3%). Cleavage rates were 48.1% for cardiomyocytes and 62.8% for the fibroblast-derived embryos. The developmental capacity to the morula/blastocyst was significantly (P<0.01) reduced for cardiomyocyte (9.4%) compared with the fibroblast-derived (32.4%) reconstructed embryos. Most of the Day 7 embryos were frozen for investigation of gene expression patterns of cardiac marker genes. Staining with Hoechst 33342 for counting total cell numbers revealed that 87.3±20.9 blastocysts were derived from fibroblasts and 100 blastocysts from cardiomyocytes. These results indicate that nuclear transfer with terminally differentiated cardiomyocytes is possible, although with reduced rates. Studies are underway to analyze the gene expression of cardiac marker genes in reconstructed embryos to gain insight into dedifferentiation after nuclear transfer using cardiomyocytes as a model. This study was supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG; Ni 256/16-1)


2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (13) ◽  
pp. 1175-1182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guini Hong ◽  
Pengming Zeng ◽  
Na Li ◽  
Hao Cai ◽  
You Guo ◽  
...  

Background: Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a heterogeneous neurodegenerative disease. However, few studies have investigated the heterogeneous gene expression patterns in AD. Objective and Methods: We examined the gene expression patterns in four brain regions of AD based on the within-sample relative expression orderings (REOs). Gene pairs with significantly reversed REOs in AD samples compared to non-AD controls were identified for each brain region using Fisher’s exact test, and filtered according to their transcriptional differences between AD samples. Subgroups of AD were classified by cluster analysis. Results: REO-based gene expression profiling analyses revealed that transcriptional differences, as well as distinct disease subsets, existed within AD patients. For each brain region, two main subgroups were classified: one subgroup reported differentially expressed genes overlapped with the age-related genes, and the other might relate to neuroinflammation. Conclusion: AD transcriptional subgroups might help understand the underlying pathogenesis of AD, and lend support to a personalized approach to AD management.


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