Project description:Damage to the heart, an organ core to the circulation of oxygen and nutrients to the body, significantly reduces lifespan. A heart transplant from human donors (allografts) has been possible for the last four decades, but there is a severe shortage of donor hearts. While transplants from other species (xenografts) are now possible, post-transplant dysfunction limits their success. Herein, we employed a learn-from-nature approach to identify genes that underlie improved cardiac performance. We generated and compared cetacean (the rough-toothed dolphin, Steno bredanensis), bama pig, and human myocardial transcriptomes to identify cellular and molecular features underlying the exceptional resilience of the cetacean heart. The cetacean myocardium exhibits a distinct cell type gene expression signature, marked by a broad and elevated expression of FHL2 (four and a half LIM domains 2) by cardiomyocytes. Overexpression of FHL2 in a mouse model of cardiac failure alle viated pressure overload-induced cardiac dysfunction (hypertrophy). Our bioinspired study provides proof of principle for improved heart function through cardiomyocyte-targeted overexpression of a single gene as a promising candidate for gene editing to enhance pig-human xenotransplant success.
Project description:Metagenome data from soil samples were collected at 0 to 10cm deep from 2 avocado orchards in Channybearup, Western Australia, in 2024. Amplicon sequence variant (ASV) tables were constructed based on the DADA2 pipeline with default parameters.
Project description:This dataset contains high-throughput RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) data generated from gubernaculum and testis samples of wild-type (WT), cetacean INSL3 knock-in (KI), and INSL3 knockout (KO) mice at selected postnatal developmental stages. The purpose of the study was to investigate the molecular consequences of replacing the endogenous mouse Insl3 coding sequence with the cetacean INSL3 ortholog, and to compare transcriptomic profiles among WT, KI, and KO mice to elucidate the functional role of INSL3 in testicular descent and cryptorchidism. RNA-seq was performed on gubernaculum tissue at postnatal day 8 (P8) and testis tissue at P8, P23, and P40 (with some groups excluded due to degeneration or non-specific damage). The dataset supports integrative analyses of developmental stage–specific and genotype–specific gene expression changes in reproductive tissues.
