Project description:Dyskeratosis congenita (DC) is an inherited multi-system disorder, characterized by oral leukoplakia, nail dystrophy, and abnormal skin pigmentation, as well as high rates of bone marrow failure, solid tumors, and other medical problems such as osteopenia. DC and telomere biology disorders (collectively referred to as TBD here) are caused by germline mutations in telomere biology genes leading to very short telomeres and limited proliferative potential of hematopoietic stem cells. We found that skeletal stem cells (SSCs) within the bone marrow stromal cell population (BMSCs, also known as bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells), may contribute to the hematological phenotype. TBD-BMSCs exhibited reduced clonogenicity, reduced telomerase activity, spontaneous differentiation into adipocytes and fibrotic cells, and increased senescence in vitro. Upon in vivo transplantation into mice, TBD-BMSCs failed to form bone or support hematopoiesis, unlike normal BMSCs. TERC reduction (a TBD-associated gene) in normal BMSCs by siTERC-RNA recapitulated the TBD-BMSC phenotype by reducing proliferation and secondary colony forming efficiency, and by accelerating senescence in vitro. Microarray profiles of control and siTERC-BMSCs showed decreased hematopoietic factors at the mRNA level, and decreased secretion of factors at the protein level. These findings are consistent with defects in SSCs/BMSCs contributing to bone marrow failure in TBD.
Project description:Purpose: to understand the mechanisms of vaccines in the lymph nodes of mice Methods: mice were treated with mRNA SARS-CoV-2 vaccine or the yellow fever vaccine. The draining inguinal or illiac lymph nodes were harvested 1, 3, or 7 days after treatment and analyzed by scRNA-seq Results: TBD Conclusions: TBD
Project description:Purpose: To understand the innate immune response to an adjuvant, 3M052, and yellow fever vaccine, YFV Methods: Draining lymph nodes were negatively selected for CD19+ and CD3+, then flow sorted into four populations: Dendritic cells (DCs), Double positive cells (DP, CD11b+BST1+), Ly6c+ cells (Ly6c), and plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs). Lymph nodes were harvested at baseline (D0), 24 hours post-treatment (D1) or 28 days post-treatment (D28). Results: TBD Conclusions: TBD
Project description:Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most prevalent joint disease with the typifying feature being the progressive degradation of articular cartilage during disease progression. In this study we used whole transcriptome RNA-seq as a tool to compare gene expression changes between age-matched osteoarthritic human hip OA cartilage (n=10) compared to control (neck of femur fracture) cartilage (n=6) [GSE107308]. All cartilage was from patients undergoing acetabulofemoral joint replacement. Cartilage RNA was isolated from cartilage within 2 hr of joint replacement surgery, mRNA was polyA purified and transcript expression was analysed using 78-base paired-end sequencing generating on average 28 million reads/sample sequencing. The data shows excellent correlation with our previous microarray data but identifies significantly more differentially expressed transcripts plus novel transcript variants, several of which have been validated by real-time qPCR. Our work sheds further light on chondrocyte transcriptome expression and highlights gene expression changes and novel transcripts potentially important in osteoarthritis progression
Project description:Small organisms can be used as biomonitoring tools to assess chemicals in the environment. Chemical stressors are especially hard to assess and monitor when present as complex mixtures. Here, Daphnia magna were exposed for 24 hours to five different munitions constituents 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT), 2,4-dinitrotoluene (2,4-DNT), 2,6-dinitrotoluene (2,6-DNT), trinitrobenzene (TNB), dinitrobenzene (DNB), or 1,3,5-trinitro-1,3,5-triazacyclohexane (RDX) as well as to 8 different munitions mixtures and ground water contaminated with munitions constituents. To better understand possible mixture effects, gene expression changes from all treatments were compared using high-density microarrays. While mixtures and ground water exposures had genes and gene functions in common with single chemical exposures, unique functions were also affected, which was consistent with the non-additivity of chemical effects in these mixtures.
