Project description:Cell senescence is a driver of various aging-associated disorders including osteoarthritis. Here, we identified a critical role for Yes-associated protein (YAP), a major effector of Hippo signaling, in maintaining a younger state of human mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) and ameliorating osteoarthritis in mice. Targeted knockout of YAP in hMSCs resulted in premature cellular senescence. Mechanistically, YAP interacted with TEA domain transcriptional factor (TEAD) to activate forkhead box D1 (FOXD1) expression. YAP deficiency led to the downregulation of FOXD1, a geroprotective protein. In turn, overexpression of YAP or FOXD1 rejuvenated aged hMSCs. Moreover, intra-articular administration of lentiviral vectors encoding YAP or FOXD1 attenuated the development of osteoarthritis in mice. Collectively, our findings reveal YAP-FOXD1, a novel aging-associated regulatory axis, as a potential therapeutic target for gene therapy to alleviate osteoarthritis.
Project description:The regeneration of diseased hyaline cartilage remains a great challenge, mainly because degeneration activities after major injury or due to age-related processes overwhelm the self-renewal capacity of the tissue. We show that repair tissue from human articular cartilage of late stages of osteoarthritis harbor a unique progenitor cell population, termed chondrogenic progenitor cells exhibiting stem cell characteristics, such as multipotency, lack of immune system activation and, in particular, migratory activity. The isolated CPC exhibit a high chondrogenic potential and were able to populate diseased tissue in vivo. Moreover, down-regulation of the osteogenic transcription factor runx-2 enhanced the expression of the chondrogenic transcription factor sox-9 and consequently the matrix synthesis potential of chondrogenic progenitor cells. Our results, while offering new insight into the biology of progenitor cells from diseased cartilage tissue, might assist future strategies to treat late stages of osteoarthritis. Experiment Overall Design: Characterization chondrogenic progenitor cells in P1 of 3 male and 3 female patients with late-stage OA in comparison to healthy chondrocytes in P1
Project description:Progressive loss of tissue homeostasis hallmarks numerous age-related pathologies. By using parabiosic approaches in animal models, recent evidences demonstrate that age-regulated geronic factors such as GDF11 or CCL11 could widely control positively or negatively tissue homeostasis. Here we evaluated the impact of the first identified anti-geronic hormone a-Klotho on tissue homeostasis taken articular cartilage and osteoarthritis (OA) as studying models. We show that a-Klotho is secreted during an in vitro induced chondrogenesis of osteo-chondral stem cells. Expression of a-Klotho is reduced in both cartilage of OA patients compared to healthy donors and in cartilage of OA murine models. Gain and loss of function experiments followed by a genome-wide gene array analysis identified Nos2-Zip8-MMP13 catabolic axis as repressed in OA chondrocytes upon a-Klotho treatment. Accordingly, intra-articular delivery of secreted a-klotho delays cartilage loss of functions in experimental OA mouse models thus revealing a novel chondroprotective function for this anti-geronic hormone.
Project description:Sox2 is required to maintain osteosarcoma cell tumor initiation.Knockdown of Sox2 leads tpo loss of tumorigenic properties. To examine gene expression changes upon Sox2 knockdown, we performed microarray analysis on mouse osteosarcoma cells expressing scrambled or Sox2shRNA. We found that genes upregulated upon Sox2 knockdown included osteoblast diffrentiation genes and genes down regulated included cell cycle and RNA processing genes as well as YAP-TEAD target genes. The Hippo pathway has a profound tumor suppressive role in cancer by restraining the strong growth-promoting function of YAP. We have previously shown that the stem cell transcription factor Sox2 maintains the tumorigenicity of osteosarcoma cancer stem cells (CSCs). In this report, we describe that Sox2 maintains stemness by antagonizing the Hippo pathway via direct repression of Hippo activators, Nf2 (Merlin) and WWC1 (Kibra), thereby leading to exaggerated YAP function. YAP is potently oncogenic in osteosarcoma and its depletion sharply reduces the tumorigenic CSC fraction. Low Nf2, low WWC1, and high YAP expression mark the CSC fraction of the tumor population, while the more differentiated fraction has high Nf2, high WWC1 and reduced YAP expression. This Sox2-Hippo axis is conserved and also operates in other Sox2-dependent cancers such as glioblastomas. We propose that disruption of YAP transcriptional activity reduces CSCs and could be a therapeutic strategy for Sox2- dependent tumors. Gene expression of 482 mouse lines mOS482 were analyzed by microarray. 3 replicates each of scrambled and Sox2shRNA were processed and hybridized
Project description:The regeneration of diseased hyaline cartilage remains a great challenge, mainly because degeneration activities after major injury or due to age-related processes overwhelm the self-renewal capacity of the tissue. We show that repair tissue from human articular cartilage of late stages of osteoarthritis harbor a unique progenitor cell population, termed chondrogenic progenitor cells exhibiting stem cell characteristics, such as multipotency, lack of immune system activation and, in particular, migratory activity. The isolated CPC exhibit a high chondrogenic potential and were able to populate diseased tissue in vivo. Moreover, down-regulation of the osteogenic transcription factor runx-2 enhanced the expression of the chondrogenic transcription factor sox-9 and consequently the matrix synthesis potential of chondrogenic progenitor cells. Our results, while offering new insight into the biology of progenitor cells from diseased cartilage tissue, might assist future strategies to treat late stages of osteoarthritis. Keywords: cell type comparison
Project description:The circadian clock in murine articular cartilage is a critical temporal regulatory mechanism for tissue homeostasis and osteoarthritis. However, translation of these findings into humans has been hampered by the difficulty in obtaining circadian time series human cartilage tissues. As such, a suitable model is needed to understand the initiation and regulation of circadian rhythms in human cartilage. We used a chondrogenic differentiation protocol on human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) as a proxy for early human chondrocyte development. Chondrogenesis was validated using histology and expression of pluripotency and differentiation markers. The molecular circadian clock was tracked in real time by lentiviral transduction of human clock gene luciferase reporters. Differentiation-coupled gene expression was assessed by RNAseq and differential expression analysis.
Project description:The Norway rat has important impacts on our life. They are amongst the most used research subjects, resulting in ground-breaking advances. At the same time, wild rats live in close association with us, leading to various adverse interactions. In face of this relevance, it is surprising how little is known about their natural behaviour. While recent laboratory studies revealed their complex social skills, little is known about their social behaviour in the wild. An integration of these different scientific approaches is crucial to understand their social life, which will enable us to design more valid research paradigms, develop more effective management strategies, and to provide better welfare standards. Hence, I first summarise the literature on their natural social behaviour. Second, I provide an overview of recent developments concerning their social cognition. Third, I illustrate why an integration of these areas would be beneficial to optimise our interactions with them.
Project description:BackgroundMurine kobuviruses (MuKV) are newly recognized picornaviruses first detected in murine rodents in the USA in 2011. Little information on MuKV epidemiology in murine rodents is available. Therefore, we conducted a survey of the prevalence and genomic characteristics of rat kobuvirus in Guangdong, China.ResultsFecal samples from 223 rats (Rattus norvegicus) were collected from Guangdong and kobuviruses were detected in 12.6% (28) of samples. Phylogenetic analysis based on partial 3D and complete VP1 sequence regions showed that rat kobuvirus obtained in this study were genetically closely related to those of rat/mouse kobuvirus reported in other geographical areas. Two near full-length rat kobuvirus genomes (MM33, GZ85) were acquired and phylogenetic analysis of these revealed that they shared very high nucleotide/amino acids identity with one another (95.4%/99.4%) and a sewage-derived sequence (86.9%/93.5% and 87.5%/93.7%, respectively). Comparison with original Aichivirus A strains, such human kobuvirus, revealed amino acid identity values of approximately 80%.ConclusionOur findings indicate that rat kobuvirus have distinctive genetic characteristics from other Aichivirus A viruses. Additionally, rat kobuvirus may spread via sewage.