ABSTRACT: Single-nucleus RNA sequencing of human cerebellum and spinal cord samples from control individuals and patients with multiple sclerosis lesions
Project description:There have been few studies that have focused on the periplaque regions surrounding demyelinated plaques, especially in spinal cords. Areas of incomplete demyelination have been demonstrated but poorly studied. The present study aimed to analyze the molecular immunopathology of periplaque demyelinated lesions (PDLs) in the spinal cord of patients with secondary progressive multiple sclerosis (MS). To achieve this goal, the transcriptomic profiles of PDLs were analyzed in post-mortem tissues derived from the cervical spinal cord of 8 patients with primary or secondary progressive MS. Sixteen spinal cord samples were microdissected for RNA extraction and hybridization on Affymetrix microarrays. Eight periplaque samples (P) were compared to normal appearing white matter (N) from the same patient.
Project description:There have been few studies that have focused on the periplaque regions surrounding demyelinated plaques, especially in spinal cords. Areas of incomplete demyelination have been demonstrated but poorly studied. The present study aimed to analyze the molecular immunopathology of periplaque demyelinated lesions (PDLs) in the spinal cord of patients with secondary progressive multiple sclerosis (MS). To achieve this goal, the transcriptomic profiles of PDLs were analyzed in post-mortem tissues derived from the cervical spinal cord of 8 patients with primary or secondary progressive MS.
2014-05-30 | GSE52139 | GEO
Project description:Single-nucleus RNA sequencing of multiple sclerosis lesions
Project description:Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is an incurable disease characterized by proteinaceous aggregate accumulation and neuroinflammation culminating in rapidly progressive lower and upper motor neuron death. To interrogate cell-intrinsic and inter-cell type perturbations in ALS, single-nucleus RNA sequencing was performed on the lumbar spinal cord in the murine ALS model SOD1G93A transgenic and littermate control mice at peri-symptomatic onset stage of disease, age 90 days. This work uncovered perturbed tripartite synapse functions, complement activation and metabolic stress in the affected spinal cord; processes evidenced by cell death and proteolytic stress-associated gene sets. Concomitantly, these pro-damage events in the spinal cord co-existed with dysregulated reparative mechanisms. This work provides a resource of cell-specific niches in the ALS spinal cord and asserts that interwoven dysfunctional neuronal-glial communications mediating neurodegeneration are underway prior to overt disease manifestation and are recapitulated, in part, in the human post-mortem ALS spinal cord.
Project description:Purpose: The goal of this study was to determine the effect of an upper-respiratory infection on changes in RNA transcription occuring in the cerebellum and spinal cord. post infection. Methods: Gender matched eight week old C57BL/6 mice were inoculated saline or with Influenza A (Puerto Rico/8/34; PR8, 1.0 HAU) by intranasal route and transcriptomic changes in the cerebellum and spinal cord tissues were evaluated by RNA-seq (100bp paired end reads) at days 0 (non-infected), 4 and 8 Results: After trimming and excluding multi-mappeing reads an average of 92.07% (cerebellum) and 91.71% (spinal cord) of genes were uniquely mapped to a gene. The average number of single end reads per sample was 36.42 and 37 million for the spinal cord and cerebellum respectively. Infection caused significant changes to the transcriptome of each tissue, which was most prominent at day 8 post infection. Conclusion: This study represents the first to use RNA-seq tecnology to evaluate the effect of peripheral influenza a infection on changes in gene expression of the cerebellum and spinal cord.
Project description:Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a complex disease of the CNS believed to require one or more environmental triggers and is characterized by episodic formation of inflammatory demyelinating lesions in the brain and spinal cord. Gut dysbiosis is a common feature in MS and here, using enhanced and quantitative PCR detection, we show that people with MS are more likely to harbor and have higher abundance of epsilon toxin (ETX)-producing strains of Clostridium perfringens within their gut microbiome compared to healthy controls (HC). MS patient-derived isolates produce functional ETX and have a genetic architecture typical of highly conjugative plasmids. In the active immunization model of experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), where pertussis toxin (PTX) is used to overcome CNS immune privilege, we find that ETX can substitute for PTX in disease induction. In contrast to PTX-induced EAE, where inflammatory demyelination is largely restricted to the spinal cord, ETX-induced EAE results in multifocal demyelination in the corpus callosum, thalamus, cerebellum, brainstem, and spinal cord, more akin to the lesion distribution observed in MS. Transcriptional profiles from CNS endothelial cells reveal ETX-induced genes that are known to play a role in overcoming CNS immune privilege. Together, these findings support ETX-producing strains of C. perfringens as biologically plausible pathogens in MS to trigger inflammatory demyelination in the context of circulating myelin autoreactive lymphocytes.
Project description:Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune disease of the central nervous system (CNS); its cause is unknown. To understand the pathogenesis of MS, researchers often use the experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) mouse model. Here, our aim was to build a proteome map of the biological changes that occur during MS at the major onset sites—the brain and the spinal cord. We performed quantitative proteome profiling in five specific brain regions and the spinal cord of EAE and healthy mice with high-resolution mass spectrometry based on tandem mass tags.
Project description:We have investigated the process of disease-induced functional perturbation and the related transcriptional changes occurring in thoraco-lumbar spinal cord extracted from Sprague-Dawley rats heterozygous for the G93A SOD1 gene mutation (Emerging Model 2148 Het Male, Taconic USA; Wyeth and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Association 2002) using spinal cord from wild type females littermates as reference tissues. Rats were obtained from a breeding project at Taconic Breeding Services (USA). We have applied large-scale gene expression analysis to define the pattern or transcriptional changes occurring in spinal cord from the G93A SOD1 rat model from a pre-symptomatic stage, at disease onset and at end-stage disease, using Bead Array analysis (Illumina, San Diego, USA). We have pooled spinal cord from N:5 transgenic rats for each of the time points considered, using the same pools of spinal cord from sex and age-matched WT rats as reference. In this specific project, the aim was to obtain a gene ontology (GO) pathway analysis of the transcriptional changes induced by the G93A SOD1 mutation in rat spinal cord. Hence, we have opted for a sample pooling strategy, well aware that in so doing, we would not obtaineed information about individuals genes variation across the samples in study but an overall view of the activation of multi-genes molecular signals. Total RNA was isolated from the spinal cords of mutant (G93A SOD1 gene mutation) female rats sacrificed at a pre-symptomatic stage (10-week old), at disease onset and at end stage disease and from age and sex-matched wild type (WT) littermates. RNA samples obtained from spinal cord extracted from rats of the same genetic types and sacrificed at the same time points (e.g. 5 RNA samples from mutant spinal cord from end-stage rats; 5 RNA samples from mutant spinal cord from rats at disease onset; 5 RNA samples from mutant pre-symptomatic rats and 5 RNA samples from spinal cord obtained from age-matched WT rats sacrificed at each of the 3 time points) were pooled and used for gene expression analysis and Ontology analysis of the expression profiles.