Project description:BackgroundCXCL12 is a vital factor in physiological and pathological processes, by inducing migration of multiple cells. We aimed to comprehensively detect the role of CXCL12 in breast cancer, and explore novel CXCL12-related biomarkers through integrative multi-omics analyses to build a powerful prognostic model for breast cancer patients.MethodsImmunohistochemistry analysis of the tissue microarray was performed to evaluate the correlation between CXCL12 expression levels and breast cancer patient outcomes. Combined single-nucleus and spatial transcriptomics data was used to uncover the expression distribution of CXCL12 in breast cancer microenvironment. CXCL12-related genes were identified by WGCNA analysis. Univariate Cox and LASSO regression analyses were then conducted to screen prognostic genes from above CXCL12-related genes, followed by the construction of the CXCL12-related prognostic signature, identification of risk groups, and external validation of the prognostic signature. Analyses of biological function, mutation landscape, immune checkpoint genes and immune cells, were performed to further reveal the differences between high/low-risk groups. Paired single-cell RNA-seq and bulk RNA-seq were analyzed to further disclose the association between the risk score and the complex tumor immune microenvironment. To screen potential therapeutic agents for breast cancer patients, analyses of gene-drug correlation and sensitivity to immunotherapy were conducted.ResultsHigh expression of CXCL12 was linked with a prolonged survival in breast cancer. A total of 402 genes were identified by WGCNA analysis and 11 genes, covering VAT1L, TMEM92, SDC1, RORB, PCSK9, NRN1, NACAD, JPH3, GJA1, BMP8B and ADAMTS2, were screened as the candidate prognostic genes. Next, the prognostic signature was built and validated using these genes to predict the outcomes of breast cancers. The high-risk group patients exhibited significantly inferior prognoses. The combination of the risk score and tumor mutational burden (TMB) had remarkably improved performance in predicting patient outcomes. Besides, high-risk group patients showed higher infiltration of M2-like macrophages. Finally, several potential anticancer drugs were identified. The high-risk group patients were more sensitive to immunotherapy but resistant to docetaxel.ConclusionsCXCL12 has important immunological implication and prognostic significance in breast cancer. The CXCL12-related prognostic model could well predict the prognosis and treatment response of breast cancers.
Project description:Chaylte vine, the tender shoot of Sechium edule, is popular among vegetable consumers because of its high nutritional content, crisp texture, and unique flavor. Existing studies on the nutrient composition of chaylte vines are mostly simple chemical determinations, which have limited the breeding of specialized cultivars and the development of related industries. Using metabolomics combined with transcriptomics, this study analyzed the metabolic characteristics and related molecular mechanisms of two common varieties of chaylte vines: green-skinned (SG) and white-skinned (SW). Between the two varieties, a total of 277 differentially accumulated metabolites (DAMs) and 739 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified. Furthermore, chemical assays demonstrated that the SW exhibited a higher total flavonoid content and antioxidant capacity. In conclusion, it was found that the SG samples exhibited a higher diversity of flavonoid subclasses compared to the SW samples, despite having a lower total flavonoid content. This inconsistent finding was likely due to the differential expression of the phenylalanine ammonia-lyase (PAL) and chalcone synthase (CHS) genes in the two varieties. These results laid the foundation for investigating the mechanisms involved in flavonoid regulation and the breeding of specialized S. edule cultivars for chaylte vine production.
Project description:BackgroundGlucose metabolism in breast cancer has a potential effect on tumor progression and is related to the immune microenvironment. Thus, this study aimed to develop a glucose metabolism-tumor microenvironment score to provide new perspectives on breast cancer treatment.MethodData were acquired from the Gene Expression Omnibus and UCSC Xena databases, and glucose-metabolism-related genes were acquired from the Gene Set Enrichment Analysis database. Genes with significant prognostic value were identified, and immune infiltration analysis was conducted, and a prognostic model was constructed based on the results of these analyses. The results were validated by in vitro experiments with MCF-7 and MCF-10A cell lines, including expression validation, functional experiments, and bulk sequencing. Single-cell analysis was also conducted to explore the role of specific cell clusters in breast cancer, and Bayes deconvolution was used to further investigate the associations between cell clusters and tumor phenotypes of breast cancer.ResultsFour significant prognostic genes (PMAIP1, PGK1, SIRT7, and SORBS1) were identified, and, through immune infiltration analysis, a combined prognostic model based on glucose metabolism and immune infiltration was established. The model was used to classify clinical subtypes of breast cancer, and PMAIP1 was identified as a potential critical gene related to glucose metabolism in breast cancer. Single-cell analysis and Bayes deconvolution jointly confirmed the protective role of the PMAIP1+ luminal cell cluster.
Project description:Skeletal muscles are complex organs consisting of multiple tissues, including connective tissue, blood vessels, nerves and multinucleated myofibers. Single-nucleus transcriptomics analyses have revealed distinctive myonuclear populations related to myofiber type and to specialized regions, including neuromuscular and myotendinous junctions. However, the use of tissue dissociation methods prevented access to global spatial organization. Here we applied RNA tomography (TOMOseq), a spatial transcriptomics approach, to explore gene expression differences along murine tibialis anterior muscles.
Project description:DNA repair genes and pathways that are transcriptionally dysregulated in cancer provide the first line of evidence for the altered DNA repair status in tumours, and hence have been explored intensively as a source for biomarker discovery. The molecular mechanisms underlying DNA repair dysregulation, however, have not been systematically investigated in any cancer type. In this study, we performed a statistical analysis to dissect the roles of DNA copy number alteration (CNA), DNA methylation (DM) at gene promoter regions and the expression changes of transcription factors (TFs) in the differential expression of individual DNA repair genes in normal versus tumour breast samples. These gene-level results were summarised at pathway level to assess whether different DNA repair pathways are affected in distinct manners. Our results suggest that CNA and expression changes of TFs are major causes of DNA repair dysregulation in breast cancer, and that a subset of the identified TFs may exert global impacts on the dysregulation of multiple repair pathways. Our work hence provides novel insights into DNA repair dysregulation in breast cancer. These insights improve our understanding of the molecular basis of the DNA repair biomarkers identified thus far, and have potential to inform future biomarker discovery.
Project description:The beta subunit of F1Fo-ATP synthase (ATP5B) has been demonstrated to play an essential role in tumor progression and metastasis. However, there has been no comprehensive pan-cancer multi-omics analysis of ATP5B, while the clinical relevance of ATP5B and its potential mechanism in regulating breast cancer are still poorly understood. In this study, we demonstrated that ATP5B has a higher frequency of amplification than deletion in most cancer types, and the copy number variation (CNV) of ATP5B was significantly positively correlated with its mRNA expression level. DNA methylation analysis across pan-cancer also revealed a strong correlation between ATP5B expression and epigenetic changes. We identified 6 significant methylation sites involved in the regulation of ATP5B expression. Tissue microarrays (TMA) from 129 breast cancer samples, integrated with multiple additional breast cancer dataset, were used to evaluate the ATP5B expression and its correlation with prognosis. Higher levels of ATP5B expression were consistently associated with a worse OS in all datasets, and Cox regression analysis suggested that ATP5B expression was an independent prognostic factor. Gene enrichment analysis indicated that the gene signatures of DNA damage recognition, the E-cadherin nascent pathway and the PLK1 pathway were enriched in ATP5B-high patients. Moreover, somatic mutation analysis showed that a significant different mutation frequency of CDH1 and ADAMTSL3 could be observed between the ATP5B-high and ATP5B-low groups. In conclusion, this study reveals novel significance regarding the genetic characteristics and clinical value of ATP5B highlighted in predicting the outcome of breast cancer patients.
Project description:Whole chromosome losses resulting in near-haploid karyotypes are found in a rare subgroup of treatment-refractory acute lymphoblastic leukemia. To systematically dissect the unique physiology and uncover susceptibilities that can be exploited in near-haploid leukemia, we leveraged single-cell RNA-Seq and computational inference of cell cycle stages to pinpoint key differences between near-haploid and diploid leukemia cells. Combining cell cycle stage-specific differential expression with gene essentiality scores from a genome-wide CRISPR-Cas9-mediated knockout screen, we identified the homologous recombination pathway component RAD51B as an essential gene in near-haploid leukemia. DNA damage analyses revealed significantly increased sensitivity of RAD51-mediated repair to RAD51B loss in the G2/M stage of near-haploid cells, suggesting a unique role of RAD51B in the homologous recombination pathway. Elevated G2/M and G1/S checkpoint signaling was part of a RAD51B signature expression program in response to chemotherapy in a xenograft model of human near-haploid B-ALL, and RAD51B and its associated programs were overexpressed in a large panel of near-haploid B-ALL patients. These data highlight a unique genetic dependency on DNA repair machinery in near-haploid leukemia and demarcate RAD51B as a promising candidate for targeted therapy in this treatment-resistant disease.
Project description:Seed germination and subsequent seedling growth affect the final yield and quality of the crop. Seed germination is defined as a series of processes that begins with water uptake by a quiescent dry seed and ends with the elongation of embryonic axis. Rice is an important cereal crop species, and during seed germination, two tissues function in a different manner; the embryo grows into a seedling as the next generation and the endosperm is responsible for nutritional supply. Toward understanding the integrated roles of each tissue at the transcriptional, translational, and metabolic production levels during germination, an exhaustive "multi-omics" analysis was performed by combining transcriptomics, label-free shotgun proteomics, and metabolomics on rice germinating embryo and endosperm, independently. Time-course analyses of the transcriptome and metabolome in germinating seeds revealed a major turning point in the early phase of germination in both embryo and endosperm, suggesting that dramatic changes begin immediately after water imbibition in the rice germination program at least at the mRNA and metabolite levels. In endosperm, protein profiles mostly showed abundant decreases corresponding to 90% of the differentially accumulated proteins. An ontological classification revealed the shift from the maturation to the germination process where over-represented classes belonged to embryonic development and cellular amino acid biosynthetic processes. In the embryo, 19% of the detected proteins are differentially accumulated during germination. Stress response, carbohydrate, fatty acid metabolism, and transport are the main functional classes representing embryo proteome change. Moreover, proteins specific to the germinated state were detected by both transcriptomic and proteomic approaches and a major change in the network operating during rice germination was uncovered. In particular, concomitant changes of hormonal metabolism-related proteins (GID1L2 and CNX1) implicated in GAs and ABA metabolism, signaling proteins, and protein turnover events emphasized the importance of such biological networks in rice seeds. Using metabolomics, we highlighted the importance of an energetic supply in rice seeds during germination. In both embryo and endosperm, starch degradation, glycolysis, and subsequent pathways related to these cascades, such as the aspartate-family pathway, are activated during germination. A relevant number of accumulated proteins and metabolites, especially in embryos, testifies the pivotal role of energetic supply in the preparation of plant growth. This article summarizes the key genetic pathways in embryo and endosperm during rice seed germination at the transcriptional, translational, and metabolite levels and thereby, emphasizes the value of combined multi-omics approaches to uncover the specific feature of tissues during germination.
Project description:ClpP activators ONC201 and related small molecules (TR compounds, Madera Therapeutics), have demonstrated significant anti-cancer potential in vitro and in vivo studies, including clinical trials for refractory solid tumors. Though progress has been made in identifying specific phenotypic outcomes following ClpP activation, the exact mechanism by which ClpP activation leads to broad anti-cancer activity has yet to be fully elucidated. In this study, we utilized a multi-omics approach to identify the ClpP-dependent proteomic, transcriptomic, and metabolomic changes resulting from ONC201 or the TR compound TR-57 in triple-negative breast cancer cells. Applying mass spectrometry-based methods of proteomics and metabolomics, we identified ∼8,000 proteins and 588 metabolites, respectively. From proteomics data, 113 (ONC201) and 191 (TR-57) proteins significantly increased and 572 (ONC201) and 686 (TR-57) proteins significantly decreased in this study. Gene ontological (GO) analysis revealed strong similarities between proteins up- or downregulated by ONC201 or TR-57 treatment. Notably, this included the downregulation of many mitochondrial processes and proteins, including mitochondrial translation and mitochondrial matrix proteins. We performed a large-scale transcriptomic analysis of WT SUM159 cells, identifying ∼7,700 transcripts (746 and 1,100 significantly increasing, 795 and 1,013 significantly decreasing in ONC201 and TR-57 treated cells, respectively). Less than 21% of these genes were affected by these compounds in ClpP null cells. GO analysis of these data demonstrated additional similarity of response to ONC201 and TR-57, including a decrease in transcripts related to the mitochondrial inner membrane and matrix, cell cycle, and nucleus, and increases in other nuclear transcripts and transcripts related to metal-ion binding. Comparison of response between both compounds demonstrated a highly similar response in all -omics datasets. Analysis of metabolites also revealed significant similarities between ONC201 and TR-57 with increases in α-ketoglutarate and 2-hydroxyglutaric acid and decreased ureidosuccinic acid, L-ascorbic acid, L-serine, and cytidine observed following ClpP activation in TNBC cells. Further analysis identified multiple pathways that were specifically impacted by ClpP activation, including ATF4 activation, heme biosynthesis, and the citrulline/urea cycle. In summary the results of our studies demonstrate that ONC201 and TR-57 induce highly similar and broad effects against multiple mitochondrial processes required for cell proliferation.