Project description:Dietary gluten proteins (prolamins) from wheat, rye, and barley are the driving forces behind celiac disease, an organ-specific autoimmune disorder that targets both the small intestine and organs outside the gut. In the small intestine, gluten induces inflammation and a typical morphological change of villous atrophy and crypt hyperplasia. Gut lesions improve and heal when gluten is excluded from the diet and the disease relapses when patients consume gluten. Oral immune tolerance towards gluten may be kept for years or decades before breaking tolerance in genetically susceptible individuals. Celiac disease provides a unique opportunity to study autoimmunity and the transition in immune cells as gluten breaks oral tolerance. Seventy-three celiac disease patients on a long-term gluten-free diet ingested a known amount of gluten daily for six weeks. A peripheral blood sample and intestinal biopsies were taken before and six weeks after initiating the gluten challenge. Biopsy results were reported on a continuous numeric scale that measured the villus height to crypt depth ratio to quantify gluten-induced gut mucosal injury. Pooled B and T cells were isolated from whole blood, and RNA was analyzed by DNA microarray looking for changes in peripheral B- and T-cell gene expression that correlated with changes in villus height to crypt depth, as patients maintained or broke oral tolerance in the face of a gluten challenge.
Project description:Coeliac disease is a small intestinal disorder caused by an abarrent immune response towards dietary gluten due to activation of pro-inflammatory gluten specific CD4+ T cells. Histological evaluation and classification of gluten induced musosal changes is part of the diagnostic work up. of adults. The kinetics of mucosal recovery following commencesment of a gluten free diet (disease remission) and the degree of mucosal changes induced by gluten reintroduction (gluten challenge) varies between patients. Also, patients classified with similar clinical and histological disease remission, can develop different degree of mucosal damage following the same gluten challenge regime. This variation poses a challenge for the interpretation of gluten induced mucosal changes both in a diagnostic and clinical trial settings. In this study, we have analysed material from small intestinal biopsies collected from 19 treated coeliac disease patients before and after completion of a 14-day oral gluten challenge. These patients are part of a previoslpreviouslyu described study where all patients were in clinical and mucosal remission at baseline but only some patients developed histological changes in the mucosa in response to gluten. We have performed shotgun LC-MSMS analysis and label-free quantification of total gut tissue and from laser capture microdissected epithelial cell layer samples. We found that differences in tissue proteome expression could separate patients as responders and non-responders to the gluten challenge. Patients whoich responded strongly to gluten , had signs of gut inflammation already at baseline, supported by presence of low-level blood inflammatory parameters and a slight increase in numbers of gluten-specific CD4+ T cells at baseline. Our proteomics analysis demonstrated baseline differences in gut tissue state between patients that were not evident from routine clinical and histological evaluation. These baseline differences likely explains why some patients respond more strongly to gluten challenge than others.
Project description:Chronic inflammation driven by persistent antigenic challenge with dietary gluten permanently reshapes the tissue-resident TCRgd+ intraepithelial lymphocyte compartment in patients with celiac disease.
Project description:Gluten reactive T-cells from blood samples from patients undergoing a 3 day gluten challenge. Samples were collected on day 6.
Both gluten reactive and non-gluten reactive T-cells were sequenced.
Project description:Here is reported the first study of transcriptome analyses using the Illumina HiSeq 4000 platform for three kinds of wheat (G represents Strong gluten wheat, Z represents middle gluten wheat,R represents weak gluten wheat). The variation of wheat varieties with different gluten content is mainly shown in the content of gluten, flour is divided into high gluten powder ( > 30%), medium gluten powder (26%-30%) and low gluten powder ( < 20%), according to the wet gluten content. In total, over 102.6 Gb clean reads were produced and 114, 621 unigenes were assembled; more than 59,085 unigenes had at least one significant match to an existing gene model. Differentially expressed gene analysis identified 2339 and 2600 unigenes which were expressed higher or lower among strong gluten, middle gluten and weak gluten wheat. After functional annotation and classification, three dominant pathways including protein isomerase, antioxidase activity and energy metabolism, and 410 unigenes related to gluten strength polymerization of wheat were discovered. In strong-gluten wheat, low molecular weight subunit content is higher than weak-gluten wheat, and the activity of cysteine synthase and isomerase is increased, which may promote the cross-linking of low molecular weight protein to high molecular weight protein. Meanwhile, POD enzyme strengthens gluten network and CAT enzyme affects gluten polymerization, along with higher ATPase activity, which will provides energy for protein polymerization reaction in comparison of strong-gluten wheat and weak-gluten wheat. The accuracy of these RNA-seq data was validated by qRT-PCR analysis. These data will extend our knowledge of quality characteristics of wheat and provide a theoretical foundation for molecular mechanism research of wheat.
Project description:Gluten-specific CD4+ T cells are drivers of celiac disease (CeD). Here we aimed to characterize such cells in blood of treated CeD patients during gluten challenge with comparison to similar cells of untreated disease.
Treated CeD patients underwent a 3-day gluten-challenge with blood sampling at baseline and day 6 (d6). Blood cells were stained with HLA-DQ:gluten tetramers (Tetramer). CD4+, gut-homing Tetramer+ and Tetramer- effector-memory T (TEM) cells at d6 were subjected to bulk RNA-seq (n=7).
Project description:Background & Aims: Traditional celiac disease diagnostics based on histomorphometric evaluations are liable to misinterpretations due to the common technical flaws e.g. wrong orientation of the biopsy and subjective errors are relatively common e.g. interobserver errors. We envisioned that there is a need for molecular histomorphometric tool that obviates these error sources yielding an objective ratio instead. Gene expression determine the state of a tissue, so the changes in expression may be associated with the severity of lesions during CD and can be used to classify it. Methods: 15 CD patients, who have been at least one year on gluten-free diet, were enrolled. All participants were biopsied before and after the gluten challenge (10 weeks, 4 grams of gluten daily). 6 healthy non-CD individuals were included as controls. Biopsies were taken on PAXgene biological fixative and embedded in paraffin and Vh/Cd ratio was assessed. RNA was extracted from the same sections and subjected to genome-wide 3’RNA-sequencing. Sequencing data was used to determine differentially expressed genes and regression model, that successfully describes the mucosal damage, was created and tested in independent material. Results: 167 differentially expressed genes were identified in healthy vs. treated CD comparisons with 117 genes downregulated and 50 genes upregulated. 415 differentially expressed genes were identified in Post gluten challenge to Treated CD comparisons with 195 genes downregulated and 220 genes upregulated. 119 genes whose expression highly correlates to Vh/Cd ratio (Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient, |rho|>0.7) were identified. Gene ontology analyses show that genes involved in cellular response to cytokines, including interferons, were over-represented. Stepwise regression allowed us computationally cut down the number of genes, that describe Vh/Cd ratio changes, to 7 and IELs number to 5. Created models describe 98.9% of observed Vh/Cd and 97.5% of IELs number variabilities; there is a strong correlation between the model’s predicted and observed ratios. Conclusions: Adoption of molecular histomorphometry, with our selected set of target genes, is quantitative and reliable way of estimating gluten-induced mucosal injury and inflammation. By including this technology one can overcome the typical shortcomings common in celiac disease diagnostics based on traditional histomorphometry analyses alone. Likewise, molecular histomorphometry is a promising instrument when incorporated in clinical trials where assessing drug efficacy on mucosal health is paramount. In addition, despite deemed healthy, based on traditional histomorphometric analyses, celiac patients on gluten free diet have significantly distinctive molecular histomorphometric pattern when compared to healthy controls.
Project description:Celiac disease (CD) is an autoimmune disease in which intestinal inflammation is induced by dietary gluten. The means through which gluten-specific CD4+T cell activation culminates in intraepithelial T cell (T-IEL)–mediated intestinal damage remain unclear. Here, we performed multiplexed single-cell analysis of intestinal and gluten-induced peripheral blood T cells from patients in different CD states and healthy controls. Untreated, active, and potential CD were associated with an enrichment of activated intestinal T cell populations, including CD4+follicular T helper (TFH) cells, regulatory T cells (Tregs), and natural CD8+αβ and γδ T-IELs. Natural CD8+αβ and γδ T-IELs expressing activating natural killer cell receptors (NKRs) exhibited a distinct TCR repertoire in CD and persisted in patients on a gluten-free diet without intestinal inflammation. Our data further show that NKR-expressing cytotoxic cells, which appear to mediate intestinal damage in CD, arise from a distinct NKR-expressing memory population of T-IELs. After gluten ingestion, both αβ and γδ T cell clones from this memory population of T-IELs circulated systemically along with gluten-specific CD4+T cells and assumed a cytotoxic and activating NKR-expressing phenotype. Collectively, these findings suggest that cytotoxic T cells in CD are rapidly mobilized in parallel with gluten-specific CD4+T cells after gluten ingestion.
Project description:We optimized the extraction protocol of gluten in beer, investigated the deamidated gluten peptides and gluten fragments in beer, and explored the gluten map of eight commercial beers using optimized gluten extraction protocol followed by LC-MS/MS analysis.