Project description:In this study, we reprogrammed fibroblasts from two azoospermic Klinefelter syndrome (KS) patients, and two healthy male and one healthy female donor with an efficient integration-free method using episomal plasmids and laminin-521 (LN521). Whole genome transcriptomics analysis showed differentially expressed genes between KS and healthy male donors with enrichment in gene ontology (GO) terms associated with fertility, cardiovascular development, ossification and brain development, for both KS hiPSCs and fibroblasts, correlating with the KS clinical phenotype. Thorough XCI analysis combining transcriptomics data, RNA FISH and H3K27me3 staining, revealed skewed XCI in one KS fibroblast line and variability in XCI state of KS hiPSCs similar to female hiPSCs, showing either XaXi or XaXe status. Furthermore, we found up-regulated X-linked genes involved in nervous system development, synaptic transmission as well as metabolic processes supporting the potential use of KS derived hiPSC as an in vitro model for KS.
Project description:Here, Down syndrome-specific hiPSCs (DS1-hiPSCs and DS2-hiPSCs) were induced to differentiate to neural crest stem cells (NCSCs). We sequenced mRNA samples of DS1-NCSCs and DS2-NCSCs to generate the gene expression profiles of these cells.
Project description:Congenital Zika syndrome (CZS), caused by Zika virus (ZIKV) infection, has been associated to impairment of early brain development, particularly related to neural progenitor cells (NPCs) survival and growth. In this work we report in a high-throughput manner (RNA-Seq) the differences in the transcriptomes of hiPSCs(human induced pluripotent stem cells)-derived NPCs from 3 pairs of discordant twins for Congenital Zika syndrome (CZS). We found significant differences in the expression levels of genes relevant to the regulation of neural development between the NPCs from CZS-affected and non-affected twins, suggesting that epigenetic differences may contribute to the different susceptibilities of NPCs to ZIKV infection.