Project description:Microarray of exercised (degenerated) rat supraspinatus versus non-exercised (normal) rats were subjected to exercise that consisted of running on a 10Ë decline at 17m/min for 1 hour per day, 5 days per week. This regimen equates to approximately 7500 strides per day. After four weeks of running, rats were sacrificed by CO2 inhalation and both supraspinatus tendons were collected. 12 non-exercised rats were used as controls.
Project description:Knee osteoarthritis (KOA), as a degenerative multifactorial disease, affects the quality of life and mental health of patients, and also brings a huge socioeconomic burden. Treating synovitis have shown promise as anti-inflammatory therapeutics in mitigating OA symptoms and disease progression. Here, by analysing synovial single-cell sequencing (scRNA-seq) data from KOA, we found that synovial fibroblasts (FLS) in OA synovium showed a distinct pro-inflammatory phenotype. We collected synovial tissue from patients with clinical OA as well as from healthy donors, and histological examination was consistent with findings in scRNA-seq. Inspired by recent cross-tissue fibroblast lineage studies, we identified by sequencing that healthy FLS in synovial tissues share transcriptome-level similarities with dermal fibroblasts (DFb). Subsequently, we revealed the local as well as systemic distribution of intra-articular injected DFbs by constructing/extracting two types of rat fibroblasts (luciferase DFbs as well as GFP DFbs). The results demonstrate that DFbs can be locally retained in the synovium for up to three weeks following targeted engrafting on it. And intra-articular injection does not result in DFbs migration to vital organs or the occurrence of histological changes in these organs. A rat model of KOA was constructed by anterior cruciate ligament transection (ACLT) in order to study the therapeutic effect of DFbs on KOA. After injection, the rats showed improvement in painful gait. In addition, histological as well as imaging results showed reduced synovitis and improvement in articular cartilage. Finally we verified the protective effect of DFbs on cytokine-stimulated chondrocytes in a co-culture system.
Project description:Rotator cuff tear is frequently accompanied by progressive supraspinatus muscle degeneration, including muscle atrophy, fibrosis, fatty infiltration and inflammatory remodeling. In this study, we performed bulk RNA sequencing to investigate the transcriptional effects of a tissue-adaptive flexible ultrasound patch (TA-FUP) on supraspinatus muscle degeneration after rotator cuff injury. A rat rotator cuff injury model was established by supraspinatus tenotomy combined with suprascapular neurotomy. Injured animals were assigned to untreated control or TA-FUP treatment groups. During treatment, the muscle-side region of TA-FUP was positioned over the supraspinatus muscle and operated at 100 mW/cm², while the tendon-side region was positioned over the tendon-to-bone interface and operated at 50 mW/cm². TA-FUP treatment was administered three times per week for 10 min per session. Bulk RNA-seq was performed on supraspinatus muscle tissues from control and TA-FUP-treated rats to characterize treatment-induced transcriptional changes. Differential expression and pathway analyses showed that TA-FUP broadly reprogrammed the degenerative transcriptomic profile of injured supraspinatus muscle. Genes and pathways associated with adipogenesis, lipid transport, lipid metabolic process, extracellular matrix organization, collagen fibril organization, immune response and inflammatory response were downregulated after TA-FUP treatment. Gene set enrichment analysis further suggested enhanced fatty acid degradation and suppression of adipocyte-associated lipid remodeling, ECM-receptor interaction and NF-κB signaling. These data provide transcriptomic evidence that TA-FUP attenuates supraspinatus muscle degeneration after rotator cuff injury by suppressing adipogenic, fibrotic and inflammatory remodeling programs.
Project description:In order to establish a rat embryonic stem cell transcriptome, mRNA from rESC cell line DAc8, the first male germline competent rat ESC line to be described and the first to be used to generate a knockout rat model was characterized using RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) analysis.
Project description:A series of two color gene expression profiles obtained using Agilent 44K expression microarrays was used to examine sex-dependent and growth hormone-dependent differences in gene expression in rat liver. This series is comprised of pools of RNA prepared from untreated male and female rat liver, hypophysectomized (‘Hypox’) male and female rat liver, and from livers of Hypox male rats treated with either a single injection of growth hormone and then killed 30, 60, or 90 min later, or from livers of Hypox male rats treated with two growth hormone injections spaced 3 or 4 hr apart and killed 30 min after the second injection. The pools were paired to generate the following 6 direct microarray comparisons: 1) untreated male liver vs. untreated female liver; 2) Hypox male liver vs. untreated male liver; 3) Hypox female liver vs. untreated female liver; 4) Hypox male liver vs. Hypox female liver; 5) Hypox male liver + 1 growth hormone injection vs. Hypox male liver; and 6) Hypox male liver + 2 growth hormone injections vs. Hypox male liver. A comparison of untreated male liver and untreated female liver liver gene expression profiles showed that of the genes that showed significant expression differences in at least one of the 6 data sets, 25% were sex-specific. Moreover, sex specificity was lost for 88% of the male-specific genes and 94% of the female-specific genes following hypophysectomy. 25-31% of the sex-specific genes whose expression is altered by hypophysectomy responded to short-term growth hormone treatment in hypox male liver. 18-19% of the sex-specific genes whose expression decreased following hypophysectomy were up-regulated after either one or two growth hormone injections. Finally, growth hormone suppressed 24-36% of the sex-specific genes whose expression was up-regulated following hypophysectomy, indicating that growth hormone acts via both positive and negative regulatory mechanisms to establish and maintain the sex specificity of liver gene expression. For full details, see V. Wauthier and D.J. Waxman, Molecular Endocrinology (2008)