Next Generation Sequencing (RNA-Seq) of stem cell-treated rats for quantitative analyses of retinal transcriptomes
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ABSTRACT: Mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) heterogeneity can lead to variable treatment outcomes. Genetically modifying MSCs to express erythropoietin could confer additional therapeutic benefits that may enhance standalone MSC treatments. The goals of this study are to compare NGS-derived retinal transcriptome profiling (RNA-seq) between healthy, retinal degenerated, and stem cell-treated rat retinal degeneration models for high-throughput data analysis. MSC, Wharton's jelly Mesecnhymal stem cells; MSCEPO, EPO-expressing MSC; DPSC, dental pulp MSC stem cells Methods: Retinal mRNA profiles of 31-day-old healthy, sodium iodate-administered (retinotoxic inducer), DPSC-treated, MSC-treated, and MSCEPO-treated Sprague Dawley rats were generated by deep sequencing, in triplicate, using Illumina Nextseq 500. The sequence reads that passed quality filters were analyzed at the transcript isoform level with Salmon, and then converted to the gene level count matrices for quantification with DESeq2. The quant assay kit was used for qPCR amplification. Results: Using the Salmon-DESeq2 pipeline, we mapped about 25-35 million sequence reads per sample to the rat genome (build Rnor 6.0) and identified 20,376 transcripts in the retinas of the control and experimental groups. Approximately 500-1000 genes were found to be differentially expressed using the arbitrary cutoff of Padj<.05 and fold change>±2.0. Hierarchical clustering of differentially expressed genes revealed profiles involved in cellular regeneration,cell death, and phototransduction, which indicated the therapeutic effectiveness of the stem cells on retinal survival. Gene set enrichment analysis and pathway topology analysis showed enrichment in the aforementioned processes, Padj<.05. Conclusions: Our study represents the first detailed analysis of MSCEPO-treated retinal transcriptomes, with biologic replicates, generated by RNA-seq technology. The optimized data analysis workflows reported here should provide a framework for further investigations in MSC enhancement methods. Our results show that NGS offers a comprehensive and more accurate quantitative and qualitative evaluation of mRNA content within the retina. We conclude that RNA-seq based retinal transcriptome characterization would expedite genetic network analyses and permit the dissection of complex biologic functions, especially in regards to MSC-mediated tissue repair and phototransduction.
ORGANISM(S): Rattus norvegicus
PROVIDER: GSE164152 | GEO | 2021/04/27
REPOSITORIES: GEO
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