Project description:Dysregulated protease activity is often implicated in the initiation of inflammation and immune cell recruitment in gastrointestinal inflammatory diseases. Using N-terminomics/TAILS (terminal amine isotopic labeling of substrates), we compared proteases, along with their substrates and inhibitors, between colonic mucosal biopsies of healthy patients and those with ulcerative colitis (UC). Among the 1,642 N-termini enriched using TAILS, increased endogenous processing of proteins was identified in UC compared to healthy patients. Changes in the reactome pathways for proteins associated with metabolism, adherens junction proteins (E-cadherin, liver-intestinal cadherin, catenin alpha-1 and catenin delta-1) and neutrophil degranulation were identified between the two groups. Increased neutrophil infiltration and distinct proteases observed in ulcerative colitis may result in extensive break down, altered processing or increased remodeling of adherens junctions and other cellular functions. Analysis of the proteolytic preferred cleavage sites indicated that the majority of proteolytic activity and processing comes from host proteases, but that key microbial proteases may also play a role in maintaining homeostasis. Thus, the identification of distinct proteases and processing of their substrates improves the understanding of dysregulated proteolysis in normal intestinal physiology and ulcerative colitis.
Project description:Escherichia coli Nissle 1917 (EcN) is an intestinal probiotic that is effective for the treatment of intestinal disorders, such as inflammatory bowel disease and ulcerative colitis. EcN is a representative Gram-negative probiotic in biomedical research and is an intensively studied probiotic. However, to date, its genome-wide metabolic network model has not been developed. Here, we developed a comprehensive and highly curated EcN metabolic model, referred to as iDK1463, based on genome comparison and phenome analysis. The model was improved and validated by comparing the simulation results with experimental results from phenotype microarray tests. iDK1463 comprises 1463 genes, 1313 unique metabolites, and 2984 metabolic reactions. Phenome data of EcN were compared with those of Escherichia coli intestinal commensal K-12 MG1655. iDK1463 was simulated to identify the genetic determinants responsible for the observed phenotypic differences between EcN and K-12. Further, the model was simulated for gene essentiality analysis and utilization of nutrient sources under anaerobic growth conditions. These analyses provided insights into the metabolic mechanisms by which EcN colonizes and persists in the gut. iDK1463 will contribute to the system-level understanding of the functional capacity of gut microbes and their interactions with microbiota and human hosts, as well as the development of live microbial therapeutics.
Project description:The goal of this project is to find out whether human intestinal IgA1 and IgA2 secretion, transport and reactivity towards the microbiota might be involved in dysbiosis induction during Crohn’s disease and Ulcerative colitis. Mass spectrometry was used to characterize SIgA from Crohn’s disease patient and Ulcerative colitis patient, in term of O- and N-glycosylation in order to study their reverse transcytosis capacity and their role in intestinal inflammation.
Project description:Primary outcome(s): Differences in bacterial flora composition between colorectal cancer with ulcerative colitis and sporadic colorectal cancer
Project description:The etiology of the inflammatory bowel diseases, including ulcerative colitis, remains incomplete, but recent findings points to the involvement of complex host-microbial interactions. We hypothesized that an analysis of the proteins on the host-microbial interacting surface, the intestinal mucosa, could reveal novel insights into the diseases. Mucosal colonic biopsies were extracted by standard colonscopy from sigmoideum from 10 ulcerative colitis patients from non-inflammed tissue and 10 controls. The biopsies were immediately following extraction snap-frozen for protein analysis and the protein content of the biopsies was characterized by high-throughput quantative gel-free proteomics.
Project description:Restorative proctocolectomy with ileal pouch-anal anastomosis is a surgical procedure in patients with ulcerative colitis refractory to medical therapies. Pouchitis, the most common complication, is inflammation of the pouch of unknown etiology. To define how the intestinal immune system is distinctly organized in response to inflammation and to develop mechanistic hypotheses of pouchitis, we analyzed tissues from patients with and without pouchitis and from patients with ulcerative colitis using single-cell RNA sequencing. We examined pouch lamina propria CD45+ hematopoietic cells from intestinal tissues of ulcerative colitis patients with (n=15) and without an ileal pouch-anal anastomosis (n=11). Further in silico meta-analysis was performed to generate transcriptional interaction networks and identify drug targets for patients with inflamed pouches. We identified a population of IL1B+ antimicrobial macrophages and FOXP3+/BATF+ T cells that are expanded in inflamed tissues, which we further validated in other single cell RNA-seq datasets from IBD patients. Cell type specific markers obtained from single-cell RNA-sequencing was used to infer representation from bulk RNA sequencing datasets, which further implicated antimicrobial macrophages expressing IL1B with S100A8/A9 calprotectin as being associated with inflammation, and Bacteroidiales and Clostridiales bacterial taxa. We found that non-responsiveness to anti-integrin biologic therapies in ulcerative colitis patients was associated with the signature of this antimicrobial macrophage population in a subset of patients. This study identified conserved and distinct features of intestinal inflammation between parts of the small and large intestine undergoing similar inflammation conditions. Specifically, we relate inflammation of the pouch, a surgically constructed organ, to other inflammatory contexts throughout the gastrointestinal tract.
Project description:Different genes, especially cytokines, have been deregulated in the inflammatory environment of intestinal mucosa in ulcerative colitis patients. The effects of differential gene expression such as immunological factors have been described before, however, there is no evidence of alarmins deregulated by microRNAs impacting on the pathophysiology of UC. Our goal is to study deregulated genes in inflamed mucosa for microRNA pairing in a Chilean cohort of patients. We used microarrays to compare inflamed and non inflamed mucosa from chilean ulcerative colitis patients
Project description:Studying differences in responders and non-responders to therapy in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients (crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis)