Project description:Despite recent improvements in management of idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension, mortality remains high. Understanding the alterations in the transcriptome–phenotype of the key lung cells involved could provide insight into the drivers of pathogenesis. In this study, we examined differential gene expression of cell types implicated in idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension from lung explants of patients with idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension compared to control lungs. After tissue digestion, we analyzed all cells from three idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension and six control lungs using droplet-based single cell RNA-sequencing. After dimensional reduction by t-stochastic neighbor embedding, we compared the transcriptomes of endothelial cells, pericyte/smooth muscle cells, fibroblasts, and macrophage clusters, examining differential gene expression and pathways implicated by analysis of Gene Ontology Enrichment. We found that endothelial cells and pericyte/smooth muscle cells had the most differentially expressed gene profile compared to other cell types. Top differentially upregulated genes in endothelial cells included novel genes: ROBO4, APCDD1, NDST1, MMRN2, NOTCH4, and DOCK6, as well as previously reported genes: ENG, ORAI2, TFDP1, KDR, AMOTL2, PDGFB, FGFR1, EDN1, and NOTCH1. Several transcription factors were also found to be upregulated in idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension endothelial cells including SOX18, STRA13, LYL1, and ELK, which have known roles in regulating endothelial cell phenotype. In particular, SOX18 was implicated through bioinformatics analyses in regulating the idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension endothelial cell transcriptome. Furthermore, idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension endothelial cells upregulated expression of FAM60A and HDAC7, potentially affecting epigenetic changes in idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension endothelial cells. Pericyte/smooth muscle cells expressed genes implicated in regulation of cellular apoptosis and extracellular matrix organization, and several ligands for genes showing increased expression in endothelial cells. In conclusion, our study represents the first detailed look at the transcriptomic landscape across idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension lung cells and provides robust insight into alterations that occur in vivo in idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension lungs.

Project description:Human herpesvirus-8 (HHV-8) is the causative agent of Kaposiâs sarcoma and is associated with the angioproliferative disorders primary effusion lymphoma (PEL) and multicentric Castlemanâs disease (MCD). We have previously described evidence of HHV-8 infection within the pulmonary vasculature of patients with idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension (IPAH). We speculated that viral infection of the pulmonary microvascular endothelial cells could cause the angioproliferative phenotype characteristic of severe pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). We now demonstrate the ability of HHV-8 to infect human pulmonary microvascular endothelial cells (HPMVECs) in vitro, confirming both latent and lytic infection. HHV-8 infection of HPMVECs resulted in significant changes of gene expression including alterations of pathways integral to both cellular apoptosis and angiogenesis. This infection also results in alterations of genes integral to the bone morphogenic protein (BMP) pathway, including down regulation of bone morphogenic protein receptor 1a (BMPR1a) and bone morphogenic protein 4 (BMP4). Other genes previously implicated in the development of PAH are also altered in expression by HHV-8 infection. These include increased expression of Interleukin-6 (IL-6) and the matrix metalloproteinases (MMP)-1, MMP-2 and MMP-10. Lastly, cells infected with HHV-8 apoptosis resistant. Infection of pulmonary microvascular endothelial cells with human herepesvirus-8 results in alteration of the BMP pathway as well as an anti-apoptotic phenotype, consistent with the development of plexiform lesions characteristic of pulmonary arterial hypertension. Experiment Overall Design: â¢ Direct comparison of HHV8-infected and mock-infected human pulmonary microvascular endothelial cells. Experiment Overall Design: â¢ Triplicate infection and mock infection samples were prepared. One hybridization per sample, 6 total hybridizations Experiment Overall Design: â¢ Single channel hybridization (no reference).

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Human lung metagenome

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