Overactivation of wound healing-associated TGF-beta responses in EZH2-deficient decidual stromal cells.

ABSTRACT: Our objective was to identify genes upregulated by TGF-beta in control and Ezh2 cKO decidual stromal cells (DSCs), and to compare this set of genes with a previously identified gene set of H3K27me3-marked decidual genes that are putatively silenced by EZH2/PRC2 (Nancy et al. JCI. 2018). We also wanted to assess baseline (BL) gene expression in control and Ezh2 cKO DSCs, and compare it to an RNA-seq analysis of differential gene expression in whole tissue Ezh2 cKO and control decidua. RNA was isolated from untreated and TGF-beta treated decidual stromal cells from control and Ezh2 cKO mice. Sequencing provided was 706 million total reads with an average of 82.2% of these reads aligning uniquely to the mouse genome. Reads uniquely mapped to known mRNAs were used to identify gene expression changes between housing conditions using DESeq2. TGF-beta induced 638 protein-coding genes in EZH2-deficient DSCs versus 480 in control DSCs (with a 295 gene overlap), demonstrating that EZH2-deficient DSCs are transcriptionally more responsive to TGF- (P=0.0025, Fisher’s exact test). Within the 638 genes, activated fibroblast signature genes were highly over-represented. TGF-target genes were 2.7-fold over-represented within the set of genes with higher expression in EZH2-deficient DSCs at baseline (BL; i.e., when neither EZH2-deficient nor control DSCs were treated with TGF-beta; P<1x10-20) . 741 genes were overexpressed in Ezh2 cKO DSCs compared to control DSCs, and 904 genes were underexpressed. Moreover, by comparing to our laboratory's previous CHIP-Seq analysis (Nancy et al. JCI 2018), we noted that genes overexpressed in cKO mice were enriched in previously identified H3K27me3-marked genes (P<1x10-26).

ORGANISM(S): Mus musculus

PROVIDER: GSE171724 | GEO | 2022/01/11

REPOSITORIES: GEO