4 Molecularly guided multiplexed digital spatial analysis reveals differential gene expression profiles in the WNT-β-catenin pathway between melanoma and prostate tumors

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (Suppl 3) ◽  
pp. A4-A4
Author(s):  
Anushka Dikshit ◽  
Dan Zollinger ◽  
Karen Nguyen ◽  
Jill McKay-Fleisch ◽  
Kit Fuhrman ◽  
...  

BackgroundThe canonical WNT-β-catenin signaling pathway is vital for development and tissue homeostasis but becomes strongly tumorigenic when dysregulated. and alter the transcriptional signature of a cell to promote malignant transformation. However, thorough characterization of these transcriptomic signatures has been challenging because traditional methods lack either spatial information, multiplexing, or sensitivity/specificity. To overcome these challenges, we developed a novel workflow combining the single molecule and single cell visualization capabilities of the RNAscope in situ hybridization (ISH) assay with the highly multiplexed spatial profiling capabilities of the GeoMx™ Digital Spatial Profiler (DSP) RNA assays. Using these methods, we sought to spatially profile and compare gene expression signatures of tumor niches with high and low CTNNB1 expression.MethodsAfter screening 120 tumor cores from multiple tumors for CTNNB1 expression by the RNAscope assay, we identified melanoma as the tumor type with the highest CTNNB1 expression while prostate tumors had the lowest expression. Using the RNAscope Multiplex Fluorescence assay we selected regions of high CTNNB1 expression within 3 melanoma tumors as well as regions with low CTNNB1 expression within 3 prostate tumors. These selected regions of interest (ROIs) were then transcriptionally profiled using the GeoMx DSP RNA assay for a set of 78 genes relevant in immuno-oncology. Target genes that were differentially expressed were further visualized and spatially assessed using the RNAscope Multiplex Fluorescence assay to confirm GeoMx DSP data with single cell resolution.ResultsThe GeoMx DSP analysis comparing the melanoma and prostate tumors revealed that they had significantly different gene expression profiles and many of these genes showed concordance with CTNNB1 expression. Furthermore, immunoregulatory targets such as ICOSLG, CTLA4, PDCD1 and ARG1, also demonstrated significant correlation with CTNNB1 expression. On validating selected targets using the RNAscope assay, we could distinctly visualize that they were not only highly expressed in melanoma compared to the prostate tumor, but their expression levels changed proportionally to that of CTNNB1 within the same tumors suggesting that these differentially expressed genes may be regulated by the WNT-β-catenin pathway.ConclusionsIn summary, by combining the RNAscope ISH assay and the GeoMx DSP RNA assay into one joint workflow we transcriptionally profiled regions of high and low CTNNB1 expression within melanoma and prostate tumors and identified genes potentially regulated by the WNT- β-catenin pathway. This novel workflow can be fully automated and is well suited for interrogating the tumor and stroma and their interactions.GeoMx Assays are for RESEARCH ONLY, not for diagnostics.

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniele Mercatelli ◽  
Forest Ray ◽  
Federico M. Giorgi

AbstractCancer is a disease often characterized by the presence of multiple genomic alterations, which trigger altered transcriptional patterns and gene expression, which in turn sustain the processes of tumorigenesis, tumor progression and tumor maintenance. The links between genomic alterations and gene expression profiles can be utilized as the basis to build specific molecular tumorigenic relationships. In this study we perform pan-cancer predictions of the presence of single somatic mutations and copy number variations using machine learning approaches on gene expression profiles. We show that gene expression can be used to predict genomic alterations in every tumor type, where some alterations are more predictable than others. We propose gene aggregation as a tool to improve the accuracy of alteration prediction models from gene expression profiles. Ultimately, we show how this principle can be beneficial in intrinsically noisy datasets, such as those based on single cell sequencing.Author SummaryIn this article we show that transcript abundance can be used to predict the presence or absence of the majority of genomic alterations present in human cancer. We also show how these predictions can be improved by aggregating genes into small networks to counteract the effects of transcript measurement noise.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (Suppl 1) ◽  
pp. A12.1-A12
Author(s):  
Y Arjmand Abbassi ◽  
N Fang ◽  
W Zhu ◽  
Y Zhou ◽  
Y Chen ◽  
...  

Recent advances of high-throughput single cell sequencing technologies have greatly improved our understanding of the complex biological systems. Heterogeneous samples such as tumor tissues commonly harbor cancer cell-specific genetic variants and gene expression profiles, both of which have been shown to be related to the mechanisms of disease development, progression, and responses to treatment. Furthermore, stromal and immune cells within tumor microenvironment interact with cancer cells to play important roles in tumor responses to systematic therapy such as immunotherapy or cell therapy. However, most current high-throughput single cell sequencing methods detect only gene expression levels or epigenetics events such as chromatin conformation. The information on important genetic variants including mutation or fusion is not captured. To better understand the mechanisms of tumor responses to systematic therapy, it is essential to decipher the connection between genotype and gene expression patterns of both tumor cells and cells in the tumor microenvironment. We developed FocuSCOPE, a high-throughput multi-omics sequencing solution that can detect both genetic variants and transcriptome from same single cells. FocuSCOPE has been used to successfully perform single cell analysis of both gene expression profiles and point mutations, fusion genes, or intracellular viral sequences from thousands of cells simultaneously, delivering comprehensive insights of tumor and immune cells in tumor microenvironment at single cell resolution.Disclosure InformationY. Arjmand Abbassi: None. N. Fang: None. W. Zhu: None. Y. Zhou: None. Y. Chen: None. U. Deutsch: None.


2021 ◽  
Vol 288 (1945) ◽  
pp. 20202793
Author(s):  
Alexander Yermanos ◽  
Daniel Neumeier ◽  
Ioana Sandu ◽  
Mariana Borsa ◽  
Ann Cathrin Waindok ◽  
...  

Neuroinflammation plays a crucial role during ageing and various neurological conditions, including Alzheimer's disease, multiple sclerosis and infection. Technical limitations, however, have prevented an integrative analysis of how lymphocyte immune receptor repertoires and their accompanying transcriptional states change with age in the central nervous system. Here, we leveraged single-cell sequencing to simultaneously profile B cell receptor and T cell receptor repertoires and accompanying gene expression profiles in young and old mouse brains. We observed the presence of clonally expanded B and T cells in the central nervous system of aged male mice. Furthermore, many of these B cells were of the IgM and IgD isotypes, and had low levels of somatic hypermutation. Integrating gene expression information additionally revealed distinct transcriptional profiles of these clonally expanded lymphocytes. Our findings implicate that clonally related T and B cells in the CNS of elderly mice may contribute to neuroinflammation accompanying homeostatic ageing.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Bischoff ◽  
Alexandra Trinks ◽  
Jennifer Wiederspahn ◽  
Benedikt Obermayer ◽  
Jan Patrick Pett ◽  
...  

AbstractLung carcinoid tumors, also referred to as pulmonary neuroendocrine tumors or lung carcinoids, are rare neoplasms of the lung with a more favorable prognosis than other subtypes of lung cancer. Still, some patients suffer from relapsed disease and metastatic spread while no consensus treatment exists for metastasized carcinoids. Several recent single-cell studies have provided detailed insights into the cellular heterogeneity of more common lung cancers, such as adeno- and squamous cell carcinoma. However, the characteristics of lung carcinoids on the single-cell level are yet completely unknown.To study the cellular composition and single-cell gene expression profiles in lung carcinoids, we applied single-cell RNA sequencing to three lung carcinoid tumor samples and normal lung tissue. The single-cell transcriptomes of carcinoid tumor cells reflected intertumoral heterogeneity associated with clinicopathological features, such as tumor necrosis and proliferation index. The immune microenvironment was specifically enriched in noninflammatory monocyte-derived myeloid cells. Tumor-associated endothelial cells were characterized by distinct gene expression profiles. A spectrum of vascular smooth muscle cells and pericytes predominated the stromal microenvironment. We found a small proportion of myofibroblasts exhibiting features reminiscent of cancer-associated fibroblasts. Stromal and immune cells exhibited potential paracrine interactions which may shape the microenvironment via NOTCH, VEGF, TGFβ and JAK/STAT signaling. Moreover, single-cell gene signatures of pericytes and myofibroblasts demonstrated prognostic value in bulk gene expression data.Here, we provide first comprehensive insights into the cellular composition and single-cell gene expression profiles in lung carcinoids, demonstrating the non-inflammatory and vessel-rich nature of their tumor microenvironment, and outlining relevant intercellular interactions which could serve as future therapeutic targets.


Author(s):  
Xiangtao Li ◽  
Shaochuan Li ◽  
Lei Huang ◽  
Shixiong Zhang ◽  
Ka-chun Wong

Abstract Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) technologies have been heavily developed to probe gene expression profiles at single-cell resolution. Deep imputation methods have been proposed to address the related computational challenges (e.g. the gene sparsity in single-cell data). In particular, the neural architectures of those deep imputation models have been proven to be critical for performance. However, deep imputation architectures are difficult to design and tune for those without rich knowledge of deep neural networks and scRNA-seq. Therefore, Surrogate-assisted Evolutionary Deep Imputation Model (SEDIM) is proposed to automatically design the architectures of deep neural networks for imputing gene expression levels in scRNA-seq data without any manual tuning. Moreover, the proposed SEDIM constructs an offline surrogate model, which can accelerate the computational efficiency of the architectural search. Comprehensive studies show that SEDIM significantly improves the imputation and clustering performance compared with other benchmark methods. In addition, we also extensively explore the performance of SEDIM in other contexts and platforms including mass cytometry and metabolic profiling in a comprehensive manner. Marker gene detection, gene ontology enrichment and pathological analysis are conducted to provide novel insights into cell-type identification and the underlying mechanisms. The source code is available at https://github.com/li-shaochuan/SEDIM.


Science ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 371 (6531) ◽  
pp. eaba5257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Kuchina ◽  
Leandra M. Brettner ◽  
Luana Paleologu ◽  
Charles M. Roco ◽  
Alexander B. Rosenberg ◽  
...  

Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) has become an essential tool for characterizing gene expression in eukaryotes, but current methods are incompatible with bacteria. Here, we introduce microSPLiT (microbial split-pool ligation transcriptomics), a high-throughput scRNA-seq method for Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria that can resolve heterogeneous transcriptional states. We applied microSPLiT to >25,000 Bacillus subtilis cells sampled at different growth stages, creating an atlas of changes in metabolism and lifestyle. We retrieved detailed gene expression profiles associated with known, but rare, states such as competence and prophage induction and also identified unexpected gene expression states, including the heterogeneous activation of a niche metabolic pathway in a subpopulation of cells. MicroSPLiT paves the way to high-throughput analysis of gene expression in bacterial communities that are otherwise not amenable to single-cell analysis, such as natural microbiota.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (5) ◽  
pp. 881-896 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dongxu He ◽  
Aiqin Mao ◽  
Chang-Bo Zheng ◽  
Hao Kan ◽  
Ka Zhang ◽  
...  

Abstract The aorta, with ascending, arch, thoracic and abdominal segments, responds to the heartbeat, senses metabolites and distributes blood to all parts of the body. However, the heterogeneity across aortic segments and how metabolic pathologies change it are not known. Here, a total of 216 612 individual cells from the ascending aorta, aortic arch, and thoracic and abdominal segments of mouse aortas under normal conditions or with high blood glucose levels, high dietary salt, or high fat intake were profiled using single-cell RNA sequencing. We generated a compendium of 10 distinct cell types, mainly endothelial (EC), smooth muscle (SMC), stromal and immune cells. The distributions of the different cells and their intercommunication were influenced by the hemodynamic microenvironment across anatomical segments, and the spatial heterogeneity of ECs and SMCs may contribute to differential vascular dilation and constriction that were measured by wire myography. Importantly, the composition of aortic cells, their gene expression profiles and their regulatory intercellular networks broadly changed in response to high fat/salt/glucose conditions. Notably, the abdominal aorta showed the most dramatic changes in cellular composition, particularly involving ECs, fibroblasts and myeloid cells with cardiovascular risk factor-related regulons and gene expression networks. Our study elucidates the nature and range of aortic cell diversity, with implications for the treatment of metabolic pathologies.


2008 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 165
Author(s):  
X. S. Cui ◽  
X. Y. Li ◽  
T. Kim ◽  
N.-H. Kim

Trichostatin A (TSA) is an inhibitor of histone deacetylase and is able to alter gene expression patterns by interfering with the removal of acetyl groups from histones. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of TSA treatment on the development and gene expression patterns of mouse zygotes developing in vitro. The addition of 100 nm TSA to the culture medium did not affect the cleavage of mouse embryos (TSA treatment, 148/150 (99%) v. control, 107/107 (100%)); however, embryos that were treated with TSA arrested at the 2-cell stage (145/148, 98%). We estimated the number of nuclei in control and TSA-treated embryos by propidium iodide staining, taking into account the presence of any cells with two or more nuclei. At 62–63 h post-hCG stimulation, control zygotes had developed to the 4-cell stage and exhibited one nucleus in each blastomere, indicative of normal development. In contrast, we observed tetraploid nuclei in at least one blastomere in 20.8% (11/53) of the embryos that had been treated with TSA. At 28–29 h post-hCG stimulation (metaphase of the 1-cell stage), there was no difference in the mitotic index (as determined by analyzing the microtubule configuration) in the TSA group compared to the control group. At the 2-cell stage, however, we did not observe mitotic spindles and metaphase chromatin in embryos in the TSA treatment group compared to the controls. Interestingly, when embryos were cultured in TSA-free medium from 35 h post-hCG stimulation (S- or early G2-phase of the 2-cell stage) onward, almost all of them (47/50) developed to the blastocyst stage. In contrast, when embryos were cultured in TSA-free medium from 42 h post-hCG stimulation (middle G2-phase of the 2-cell stage) onward, they did not develop to the 4-cell stage. We used Illumina microarray technology to analyze the gene expression profiles in control and TSA-treated late 2-cell-stage embryos. Applied Biosystems Expression System software was used to extract assay signals and assay signal-to-noise ratio values from the microarray images. Our data showed that 897 genes were significantly (P < 0.05; 2-sample t-test) up- or down-regulated by TSA treatment compared to controls. Analysis using the PANTHER classification system (https://panther.appliedbiosystems.com) revealed that the 575 genes that were differentially expressed in the TSA group compared to the control were classified as being associated with putative biological processes or molecular function. Overall, in terms of putative biological processes, more nucleoside, nucleotide, and nucleic acid metabolism, protein metabolism and modification, signal transduction, developmental process, and cell cycle genes were differentially expressed between the TSA and control groups. In terms of putative molecular function, more nucleic acid-binding transcription factor and transferase genes were differentially expressed between the groups. The results collectively suggest that inhibition of histone acetylation in mouse embryos affects gene expression profiles at the time of zygotic genome activation, and this subsequently affects further development.


2019 ◽  
Vol 80 (04) ◽  
pp. 240-249
Author(s):  
Jiajia Wang ◽  
Jie Ma

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), an aggressive brain tumor, is characterized histologically by the presence of a necrotic center surrounded by so-called pseudopalisading cells. Pseudopalisading necrosis has long been used as a prognostic feature. However, the underlying molecular mechanism regulating the progression of GBMs remains unclear. We hypothesized that the gene expression profiles of individual cancers, specifically necrosis-related genes, would provide objective information that would allow for the creation of a prognostic index. Gene expression profiles of necrotic and nonnecrotic areas were obtained from the Ivy Glioblastoma Atlas Project (IVY GAP) database to explore the differentially expressed genes.A robust signature of seven genes was identified as a predictor for glioblastoma and low-grade glioma (GBM/LGG) in patients from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) cohort. This set of genes was able to stratify GBM/LGG and GBM patients into high-risk and low-risk groups in the training set as well as the validation set. The TCGA, Repository for Molecular Brain Neoplasia Data (Rembrandt), and GSE16011 databases were then used to validate the expression level of these seven genes in GBMs and LGGs. Finally, the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in the high-risk and low-risk groups were subjected to gene ontology enrichment, Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathway, and gene set enrichment analyses, and they revealed that these DEGs were associated with immune and inflammatory responses. In conclusion, our study identified a novel seven-gene signature that may guide the prognostic prediction and development of therapeutic applications.


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