Single-cell Transcriptome of Human Choroidal Endothelial Cells and Macrophages in Health and Atrophic Macular Degeneration
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ABSTRACT:
ORGANISM(S): Homo sapiens
PROVIDER: GSE183320 | GEO | 2022/02/21
REPOSITORIES: GEO
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Project description:Purpose: The goals of this study were to identify cell specific expression patterns from infant and aged choroid, with a particular emphasis on how endothelial gene expression changes with age. Methods: Independent libraries were prepared for infant and adult choroidal cells from four human donors. Macular and peripheral samples from single-cell donors 18-21 were acquired, analyzed, and uploaded in a previous experiment (GSE135922). In single-cell donors 22-25, new reads were acquired from a 12-mm macula-centered punch. Choroidal punches gently dissociated in collagenase II for 1 hours before cryopreservation. Thawed cells were enriched endothelial cells by incubating with anti-CD31-microbeads. Both CD31-positive and CD31-negative libraries from single-cell donors 22-25 were sequenced on an Illumina NovaSeq system. Sequenced reads were mapped to the human genome build hg19 with CellRanger(v3.0.1) and filtered to remove cells likely to be doublets or cells with a high proportion of mitochondrial reads. Libraries from single-cell donors 22-25 were aggregated with donors 18-21 using canonical correlation analysis. Feature selection was performed with the variance stabilizing transformation before integration was performed with Seurat (v3.0.1). Results: A total of 37,070 cells were recovered after filtering with 415,740,738 corresponding reads. A total of 17,229 cells were recovered from infant libraries while 19,841 cells were recovered from the adult libraries. Clusters were assigned to known choroidal cell types based on expression of distinguishing marker genes. Differential expression analysis identified genes enriched in each population of cells originating from infant versus adult libraries. Particular emphasis was given to genes enriched in infant choriocapillaris endothelial cells. Conclusions: This study provides a transcriptomic comparison of infant and aged human donor choroid at the bulk and single-cell levels. The aged choroid, in particular the aged vasculature, is enriched in pro-inflammatory genes.
2020-04-23 | GSE149100 | GEO
Project description:Purpose: The goals of this study were to identify cell specific expression patterns of the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) and a variety of choroidal cell types originating from the macula and the periphery of human donor eyes, with a particular emphasis on identifying expression signatures of choroidal endothelial cells. Methods: Independent libraries were prepared for macular and peripheral samples of combined RPE/choroid from seven donors in two single cell sequencing experiments. In the first experiment, 8-mm macular and peripheral punches of RPE/choroid from Donors 1-3 were digested in papain prior to cryopreservation and subsequent GEM barcoding/library construction. Donors 1-2 had no noted ophthalmologic disease documented, while Donor 3 was diagnosed with age-related macular degeneration. In the second experiment, 12-mm macular and peripheral punches of RPE/choroid from Donors 4-7 were digested in collagenase II prior to cryopreservation, CD31-magentic bead enrichment and subsequent GEM barcoding/library construction. Donors 5-7 had no noted ophthalmologic disease documented, while Donor 4 was diagnosed with age-related macular degeneration. In both experiments, libraries were sequenced on a HiSeq4000. Sequenced reads were mapped to the human genome build hg19 will CellRanger(v3.0.1) and filters removed cells likely to be doublets or cells with a high proportion of mitochondrial reads. Clustering of cells with similar expression profiles was performed with Seurat (v3.0.2). Results: In the first experiment with unenriched RPE/choroid from donors 1-3, we recovered 4,355 cells post filtering with 40,177,477 corresponding reads. A total of 2,167 cells originated from the macula and 2,168 cells originated from the periphery. A total of 11 clusters were identified, and highly enriched genes in each cluster were used to classify clusters into their presumed dominant cell type. Differential expression analysis was performed between cells of macular and peripheral origin in each cluster and between donors with and without a history of age-related macular degeneration. Results: In the second experiment with CD31-enriched RPE/choroid from donors 4-7, we recovered 14,234 cells post filtering with 135,742,297 corresponding reads. A total of 7,647 cells originated from the macula and 6,587 cells originated from the periphery. A total of 8,521 of these cells were presumed endothelial cells. A total of 13 clusters were identified, and highly enriched genes in each cluster were used to classify clusters into their presumed dominant cell type(s). Differential expression analysis was performed between cells of macular and peripheral origin in each cluster and between donors with and without a history of age-related macular degeneration. Within each of the endothelial clusters (Clusters 5-8), differential expression analysis was performed between each cluster and the remaining endothelial cells. Conclusions: This study provides a large atlas of single-cell level gene expression patterns of the human retinal pigment epithelium and choroidal cell types. We identify expression patterns of most expected choroidal cell populations and describe macular versus peripheral regional differences. We additionally identify enriched transcripts in specific cell populations in age-related macular degeneration. We characterize gene expression patterns along the choroidal vascular tree, and identify populations of arterial, capillary, and venous endothelial cells. Our results show that single-cell sequencing can be performed on human RPE/choroid after cryopreservation, and that CD31 magnetic bead enrichment can be employed to enrich for endothelial cells for single-cell sequencing.
2019-10-30 | GSE135922 | GEO
Project description:Choroidal atrophy is a common fundus pathological change closely related to the development of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), retinitis pigmentosa, and pathological myopia. Studies suggested that choroidal endothelial cells (CECs) that form the choriocapillaris vessels are the first cells lost in choroidal atrophy. Endothelial cells derived from human pluripotent stem cells (hPSC-ECs) can form blood vessels in vivo and in vitro. We isolated rat choroid and co-cultured with hPSC-ECs. Single-cell RNA-seq (scRNA-seq) studies showed that rat choroid ECs seemed to lose endothelial identity while hPSC-ECs upregulated angiogenesis and hypoxia genes after interacting with choroid.
2024-03-13 | GSE235990 | GEO
Project description:Purpose: The goals of this study were to identify cell specific expression patterns from a donor with a presumed diagnosis of autoimmune retinopathy (AIR). A particular focus of this study was to identify expression signatures of Müller glia and astrocytes in AIR. Methods: Independent libraries were prepared for foveal and peripheral retina from five human donors in two experiments. Foveal and peripheral samples in donors 1-3 were acquired, analyzed, and uploaded in a previous experiment (GSE130636). In donors 4-5, new reads were acquired from a 2-mm fovea-centered punch and an 8-mm peripheral punch from the inferotemporal region in each donor. Donor 4 had no documented history of retinal disease. Donor 5 was followed for 19 years at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics for progressive visual field loss and pigmentary changes and was given a presumptive diagnosis of autoimmune retinopathy. Foveal and peripheral retinal tissue were gently dissociated in papain for 1.25 hours before cryopreservation. In both experiments, libraries were sequenced on a HiSeq4000. Sequenced reads were mapped to the human genome build hg19 with CellRanger(v3.0.1) and filtered to remove cells likely to be doublets or cells with a high proportion of mitochondrial reads. Libraries from all five donors were aggregated to the same effective sequencing depth, and log-normalization of aggregated reads was performed with Seurat (v2.3.4) using a scale factor of 10,000. Results: A total of 23,429 cells were recovered after filtering with 117,885,744 corresponding reads. A total of 9,801 cells were recovered from the fovea while 13,628 cells were recovered from the periphery. A total of 7,189 cells were recovered from the donor with presumed AIR. In total, 23 clusters were identified and corresponded to all retinal cell types. The proportion of recovered cells was compared between the control (donors 1-4) and AIR (donor 5) patients. In addition, differential expression analysis identified genes enriched in each population of cells originating from the AIR donor. Particular emphasis was given to the expression profiles of glial cells (Müller cells and astrocytes) that originated from the AIR donor. Conclusions: This study provides a complementary clinical and molecular interrogation of the retina in a blinding inflammatory condition. Glial cells from the AIR donor were enriched in genes implicated in reactive gliosis, including ANXA1. Clinical, histologic, and transcriptomic evidence identify the loss of cone and rod photoreceptor cells with relative preservation of inner retinal cell types.
2020-02-17 | GSE142449 | GEO
Project description:Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a common, blinding disease of the elderly in which macular photoreceptor cells, retinal pigment epithelium, and choriocapillaris endothelial cells ultimately degenerate. Recent studies have found that degeneration of the choriocapillaris occurs early in this disease and that this endothelial cell dropout is concomitant with increased deposition of the complement membrane attack complex (MAC) at the choroidal endothelium. However, the impact of MAC injury to choroidal endothelial cells is poorly understood. To model this event in vitro, and to study the downstream consequences of MAC injury, endothelial cells were exposed to complement from human serum, compared to heat inactivated serum which lacks complement components. Cells exposed to complement components in human serum showed increased labeling with antibodies directed against the MAC, time and dose dependent cell death as assessed by lactate dehydrogenase assay, and increased permeability. RNA-Seq analysis following complement injury revealed increased expression of genes associated with angiogenesis including matrix metalloproteases (MMPs) 3 and 9, and VEGF-A. The MAC-induced increase in MMP9 RNA expression was validated using C5 depleted serum compared to C5 reconstitited serum. Increased levels of MMP9 were also determined using Western blot and zymography. These data suggest that, in addition to cell lysis, complement attack on choroidal endothelial cells promotes an angiogenic phenotype in surviving cells. RNA-Seq of RF/6A (cultured choroidal endothelial cells from Rhesus macaque) treated with either 50% heat-inactivated human serum ([CONTROL], n=3) or 50% normal human serum (active complement membrane attack complex [MAC], n=3)
2015-11-04 | E-GEOD-70806 | biostudies-arrayexpress
Project description:Purpose: The goals of this study were to identify expression patterns in foveal versus parafoveal cells isolated from the human retina. Methods: Independent libraries were prepared for foveal and parafoveal cells isolated from four human donors (donors 5-8). A foveal (1 mm) and parafoveal (4 mm) punch of neural retina was acquired from each donor. Each punch of neural retina was gently dissociated in papain (Worthington biochemical) for 1.25 hours before cryopreservation. Thawed cells were barcoded with the 10X chromium and resulting libraries were sequenced on an Illumina NovaSeq system. Sequenced reads were mapped to the human genome build GRCh38 with CellRanger(v3.0.1) and filtered to remove cells likely to be doublets or cells with a high proportion of mitochondrial reads. Libraries from single-cell donors 5-8 were aggregated using canonical correlation analysis. Feature selection was performed with the variance stabilizing transformation before integration was performed with Seurat (v3.0.1). Results: A total of 34,493 cells were recovered after filtering with 139,962,070 corresponding reads. A total of 5,856 cells were recovered from foveal libraries while 28,637 cells were recovered from the parafoveal libraries. Clusters were assigned to known retinal cell types based on expression of distinguishing marker genes. Differential expression analysis identified genes enriched in each population of cells originating from the fovea versus the parafovea. Particular emphasis was given to regionally expressed genes in cone photoreceptor cells and Muller cells. Conclusions: This study provides a transcriptomic comparison of the foveal and parafoveal human retina at the bulk and single-cell levels. The foveal retina is transcriptomically distinct from the directly surrounding parafovea.
2021-05-13 | GSE169047 | GEO
Project description:Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a common, blinding disease of the elderly in which macular photoreceptor cells, retinal pigment epithelium, and choriocapillaris endothelial cells ultimately degenerate. Recent studies have found that degeneration of the choriocapillaris occurs early in this disease and that this endothelial cell dropout is concomitant with increased deposition of the complement membrane attack complex (MAC) at the choroidal endothelium. However, the impact of MAC injury to choroidal endothelial cells is poorly understood. To model this event in vitro, and to study the downstream consequences of MAC injury, endothelial cells were exposed to complement from human serum, compared to heat inactivated serum which lacks complement components. Cells exposed to complement components in human serum showed increased labeling with antibodies directed against the MAC, time and dose dependent cell death as assessed by lactate dehydrogenase assay, and increased permeability. RNA-Seq analysis following complement injury revealed increased expression of genes associated with angiogenesis including matrix metalloproteases (MMPs) 3 and 9, and VEGF-A. The MAC-induced increase in MMP9 RNA expression was validated using C5 depleted serum compared to C5 reconstitited serum. Increased levels of MMP9 were also determined using Western blot and zymography. These data suggest that, in addition to cell lysis, complement attack on choroidal endothelial cells promotes an angiogenic phenotype in surviving cells.
2015-11-04 | GSE70806 | GEO
Project description:Purpose: The goals of this study were to identify cell specific expression patterns from infant and aged choroid, with a particular emphasis on how endothelial gene expression changes with age. Methods: Independent libraries were prepared for infant and adult choroidal cells from seventeen human donors. Trephine punch biopsies were used to acquire central RPE and choroidal tissue (infants: 4 mm punch biopsy; adults: 8 mm hemisected punch biopsy). Poly-A selected RNA transcripts underwent 150 base-pair paired-end sequencing with an Illumina HiSeq 2000. Reads were mapped to the human genome hg19 with STAR (version = 020201) and quantified with the featureCounts function from the Rsubread package (version = 1.28.1). Differential expression analysis was performed with edgeR (version = 3.26.8). Results: Differential expression analysis identified genes enriched in infant versus adult libraries. Differentially expressed genes (p-value < 0.00001, FDR < 0.001, cpm >2, logFC > 1) were input into WebGestalt for over-representation analysis. Aged choroidal samples were enriched in proinflammatory genes. Conclusions: This study provides a transcriptomic comparison of infant and aged human donor choroid at the bulk and single-cell levels. The aged choroid, in particular the aged vasculature, is enriched in pro-inflammatory genes.
2020-04-23 | GSE149099 | GEO
Project description:Consistent with clinical observations that posterior uveitis frequently involves the retinal vasculature and recent recognition of vascular heterogeneity, we hypothesized that retinal vascular endothelium was a cell population of unique molecular phenotype. Donor-matched cultures of primary retinal and choroidal endothelial cells from 6 human cadavers were incubated with either Toxoplasma gondii tachyzoites (10:1, parasite:cell) or Escherichia coli lipopolysaccharide (100 ng/mL); control cultures were simultaneously incubated with medium. Gene expression profiling of endothelial cells was performed using oligonucleotide arrays containing probes designed to detect 8747 human transcripts. After normalization, differential gene expression was assessed by the significance analysis of microarrays, with the false discovery rate set at 5 %. For selected genes, differences in level of expression between retinal and choroidal cells were evaluated by real-time RT-PCR. Graphical descriptive analysis demonstrated strong correlation between gene expression of unstimulated retinal and choroidal endothelial cells, but also highlighted distinctly different patterns of expression that were greater than differences noted between donors or between unstimulated and stimulated cells. Overall, 779 of 8,747 transcripts (8.9 %) were differentially represented. Notably, the 330 transcripts that were present at higher levels in retinal cells included a larger percentage of transcripts encoding molecules involved in the immune response. Differential gene expression was confirmed for 12 transcripts by RT-PCR. Retinal and choroidal vascular endothelial cells display distinctive gene expression profiles. Our findings suggest the possibility of treating posterior uveitis by targeting specific interactions between the retinal endothelial cell and an infiltrating leukocyte. Experiment Overall Design: Retinal and choroidal vascular endothelial cells were isolated from both eyes of 6 human cadaver donors. Endothelial cells of each subtype from each donor were separately pooled and cultured. In a first series of experiments (Experiment 1), donor-matched cultures of retinal and choroidal endothelial cells derived from 3 donors were incubated with either T. gondii tachyzoites or medium alone. In a second set of experiments (Experiment 2), cultured retinal and choroidal endothelial cells derived from the other 3 donors were stimulated with LPS or medium alone. Whenever possible, 2 replicate dishes of endothelial cells were subjected to each set of conditions. Subsequent to incubations, mRNA was extracted from a cell lysate prepared from each dish of cells, and cRNA derived from each mRNA preparation was separately hybridized to one oligonucleotide expression array.
2008-06-15 | E-GEOD-7850 | biostudies-arrayexpress
Project description:Background Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of irreversible blindness in the elderly population worldwide. Recent studies have demonstrated strong genetic associations between AMD and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within genes such as CFH and HTRA1. However, we have identified monozygotic twins discordant for AMD phenotypes (one with disease, the other without disease), suggesting that an epigenetic mechanism may also contribute to the pathogenesis of AMD. Methods We identified two twin pairs with phenotypic discordance of AMD. We obtained genomic DNA from their peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) and subjected them to DNA methylation-chip analysis (MeDIP-chip) that profiled genome-wide DNA methylation patterns on promoters of all genes and microRNAs. We next utilized the Methyl-Profiler DNA methylation assays to detect the methylation status of selected promoters. Flow cytometry and quantitative real-time PCR were used to detect the expression of the selected gene in peripheral blood cells, as well as in retinal and choroidal tissues of AMD patients and non-AMD controls. Results Our MeDIP-chip analysis identified 256 genes with hypo-methylated promoters only in the twins with AMD and 744 genes with hyper-methylated promoters only in the twins with AMD. Importantly, the promoter region of IL17RC was associated with hypo-methylated CpG sites only in the twins with AMD but not in the twins without AMD. We also found the association of the hypo-methylated IL17RC promoter with AMD in 7 pairs of siblings with discordant AMD pathology (P=0.003), as well as an independent patient cohort (95 neovascular wet and 107 geographic atrophy dry AMD patients as well as 96 non-AMD controls (95% CI, 0.01-0.10, P=9.8x10-8 for wet AMD vs. control; 95% CI, 0.05-0.32, P=2.2x10-5 for dry AMD vs. control)). Interestingly, we did not find an association between the levels of methylation on the IL17RC promoter with the previously identified genetic risk alleles in CFH, HTRA1, and ARMS2. We demonstrated an elevated expression of the IL-17RC protein in CD14+ monocytes in the peripheral blood of AMD patients as compared to non-AMD controls. These IL-17RC+ monocytes have elevated expression of CXCR1, CXCR2, and CXCR4. In addition, IL17RC was expressed only in the retinal and choroidal tissues from AMD patients but not from age-matched controls. Conclusions We show an association of the hypo-methylated IL17RC promoter with AMD, which resulted in the elevated expression of IL-17RC in peripheral blood cells as well as the retinal and choroidal tissues of AMD patients. Our study suggests that the hypo-methylated IL17RC promoter and elevated expression of IL-17RC can potentially serve as biomarkers for the diagnosis of AMD, while IL-17RC can be a new therapeutic target for AMD. In addition, our results strongly suggest an epigenetic control mechanism of AMD pathogenesis. The Affymetrix MOE430 2.0 GeneChip was used to detect gene expression patterns within the whole eye of C57B/6 normal mice.
2011-03-20 | E-GEOD-28002 | biostudies-arrayexpress