Project description:Here, we show that systems biology approaches can uncover mechanisms underlying cellular responses to nanomaterials. Using RNA Seq, we found that cationic nanoparticles are capable of triggering down-regulation of cell cycle-related genes in primary human bronchial epithelial cells at doses that do not elicit acute cytotoxicity. Bioinformatics analyses implicated NF-kappaB as a putative transcriptional regulator and functional assays confirmed that cationic nanoparticles caused NF-kappaB-dependent cell cycle arrest. Our study demonstrates the feasibility of applying systems biology tools to assess cellular responses to nanomaterials, not least at low doses.
Project description:An incomplete understanding of dose-dependent progesterone receptor (PR) biology has led to the suboptimal exploitation of PR as a therapeutic target. While hormone replacement therapies (HRT) containing low-doses of synthetic progestogens (progestins) have been associated with an increased risk of breast cancer, high-dose progestin therapies have beneficial therapeutic effects in some patients with breast cancer. Herein we report that PR subcellular localization, post-trans3lational modifications, stability, chromatin binding, responsive gene expression and downstream biology differ considerably as a function of progestin concentration. Dose-dependent transcriptional profiling revealed that different concentrations of progestin elicit classic sigmoidal and/or biphasic gene induction at distinct target gene sets. Notably, when compared to high doses of progestin, low-dose treatments lead to minimal nuclear translocation of PR while supporting robust induction of a subset of target genes, indicating that PR occupancy has a complex relationship to target gene induction. Interestingly, high but not low-dose progestin treatments lead to increased phosphorylation at Ser294 and is associated with higher receptor turnover. Furthermore, while low-dose treatments stimulate cell proliferation, high-dose treatments do not result in significant cell cycle progression to S phase. Similar biphasic and sigmoidal patterns of gene induction were observed in human breast tumor explants treated with various concentrations of progestin, underscoring the need to fine tune the dosage of PR-targeting therapies. Given the wide range of medical applications of PR target therapy, our discovery of distinct dose-dependent PR biology may have important clinical implications.
Project description:Spleens were collected from C57BL/6 mice that were treated with (1) saline, (2) a single dose of nanoparticles, (3) 3 doses of nanoparticles administered daily, or (4) 3 doses of nanoparticles administered every 3 days. Single-cell RNA-sequencing was conducted using the 10X Genomics platform and analyzed with Seurat.
Project description:We report the gene expression profile in BV2 murine microglia cell line after treatment of silica coated magnetic nanoparticles with low dose (0.01 µg/µl) and high dose (0.1 µg/µl) for 12 h.