Project description:<p>Profiling of gene expression with microarrays holds great potential for human health, for illuminating disease pathways or providing biomarkers to monitor disease or its resolution. Using high-throughput approaches for genotyping, immunophenotyping and gene expression analysis, the project will examine the basis for the control of gene expression in human immune cells, and how it is influenced by natural genetic variation or aging. In practice, the project will combine several cross-informative approaches: 1) Building on the established sample/data pipelines and robust protocols of the Immunological Genome (ImmGen) project, and on established cohorts of ethnically diverse healthy volunteers at hand, microarray techniques will be used to generate whole-genome expression profiles from purified naive CD4+ lymphocytes and monocytes from 600 healthy volunteers. A dense genetic map will be established for all donors. The results will elucidate how variation in the human genome affects the expression of immune genes, of key importance in understanding gene variants that bring susceptibility to immune or inflammatory disease. Computational analysis of these rich data will allow the reconstruction of regulatory connections between genes, helping to establish general modules and those specific of a given immune cell type. These data will be complemented by an orthogonal data group, generated from a restricted subset of 10 individuals, in which we will profile a larger set of 28 carefully delineated cell populations that exist in human blood. This work will also benefit from powerful interspecies comparison with similar experiments being performed in mice by ImmGen. 2) In addition, RNA from the same set of 28 defined cell populations will be probed with microarrays that explore other aspects of the transcriptome: i) microRNAs and other non-coding RNAs; ii) exon or splice junction arrays that will establish a map of differential splicing in human blood leukocyte. 3) The composition and reactivity of blood cells from the same donors will be established at the time of sample collection using high-throughput flow cytometry, correlating immune phenotypes with gene expression and genetic variation. 4) Genetic variability conditions the baseline levels of gene expression, but also the responsiveness to activating challenges. With samples from the same donors, NanoString technology for transcript counting will be used to analyze the transcriptional response of defined gene sets, representing response signatures of T or dendritic cells, for a fine-grained dissection of responses to different triggers (different bacterial ligands for dendritic cells, different cytokine environment for T cells). In keeping with the resource aspect of this project, all data and interpretations will be made publicly available rapidly upon curation, allowing public querying and browsing of the data, by using and evolving the existing web architectures of the ImmGen project, of the Broad Institute, and of international repositories. RELEVANCE: Exploration with DNA chips of the genome's expression microarrays holds great potential for human health, to better understand disease and to serve as diagnostic tools. Using a combination of high-throughput genomic techniques and computational biology, we will perform a broad exploration of gene expression in human blood cells across groups of African-American, Asian and European ancestry, asking how these profiles are affected by genetic variation or by age. These results will provide an invaluable reference benchmark for the interpretation of genetic and immunological studies.</p> <p>Additionally, over 90% of genetic variants associated with complex human traits map to non-coding regions, but little is understood about how they modulate gene regulation in health and disease. One possible mechanism is that genetic variants affect the activity of one or more cis-regulatory elements leading to gene expression variation in specific cell types. To identify such cases, in a second study we analyzed ATAC-seq and RNA-seq profiles from stimulated primary CD4+ T cells in up to 105 healthy donors. We found regions of accessible chromatin (ATAC-peaks) are co-accessible at kilobase and megabase resolution. 15% of genetic variants located within ATAC-peaks affected the accessibility of the corresponding peak (ATAC-QTLs). ATAC-QTLs have the largest effects on co-accessible peaks, are associated with gene expression, and are enriched for autoimmune disease variants. Our results provide insights into how natural genetic variants modulate cis-regulatory elements, in isolation or in concert, to influence gene expression.</p>

Project description:Monitoring genome-wide, cell-specific responses to human disease, although challenging, holds great promise for medicineâs future. Patients with injury severe enough to develop multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS) are known to have multiple immune derangements, including T-cell apoptosis and anergy combined with depressed monocyte antigen presentation. Genome-wide expression analysis of highly-enriched circulating leukocyte subpopulations, combined with cell-specific pathway analyses, offers a previously unavailable opportunity to discover novel leukocyte regulatory networks in critically injured patients. Severe injury induced significant changes in the T-cell, monocyte, and total leukocyte transcriptome, with only 12% of these genomic changes common to all three cell populations. T-cell-specific pathway analyses identified increased gene expression of several novel inhibitory receptors (PD-1, CD152, NRP-1, Lag3), and concomitant decreases in stimulatory receptors (CD28, CD4, IL-2Rï¡). Functional analysis of T-cells and monocytes confirmed reduced T-cell proliferation and increased cell surface expression of negative signaling receptors paired with decreased monocyte costimulation ligands. Thus, genome-wide expression from highly-enriched cell populations combined with knowledge-based pathway analyses leads to the identification of novel regulatory networks differentially expressed in injured patients. Importantly, application of cell separation, genome-wide expression, and cell specific pathway analyses can be used to discover novel pathway alterations in human disease. Experiment Overall Design: Type of experiment: Gene expression profiling of circulating total blood Experiment Overall Design: leukocytes, T-Cells, and Monocytes in severe trauma patients and healthy subjects. Experiment Overall Design: Experimental factors: Healthy subjects, 7 severely traumatized patients Experiment Overall Design: and 7 healthy subjects for transcriptome analysis. Venous blood samples Experiment Overall Design: were collected. Total blood leukocytes were isolated, and T-cell and Experiment Overall Design: monocyte populations were obtained from two subsequent aliquots of the Experiment Overall Design: leukocytes. Total leukocytes, enriched T-cells, and enriched monocytes were analyzed using Affymetrix GeneChip arrays. Experiment Overall Design: Number of hybridizations: 42 Human U133A GeneChip arrays (Affymetrix)

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Gene Expression and Regulatory Networks in Human Leukocytes

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