Project description:Renal scarring is a serious complication of chronic pyelonephritis due to vesicoureteral reflux, and requires specific biomarker for indication of early intervention. We investigated global expression profile of kidney during renal scarring formation using rat pyelonephritis model. An inoculum of the DS-17 strain Escherchia coli was injected directly into renal cortex of Wister rat. Histologically, renal scarring developed during 3 and 4 weeks after injection. The time course expression profile of approximately 20,500 genes was analyzed using high density oligonucleotide microarray followed by validation using real time RT-PCR. Most of up-regulated genes during this experimental renal scarring were associated with immune and defense response, including cytokines, chemokines, their receptors, complements, and adhesion molecules as well as proteins related to extra cellular matrix. These genes were up-regulated as early as 1 week after injection when histological examination did not show fibrotic change yet, peaked at 2 weeks and gradually decreased thereafter. However, a subset of cytokine genes is persistently activated even in 6 weeks after the injection, which are involved in TGF-β related tissue regeneration pathway or IL-1β related pathway. The products of these genes may potentially be the source of novel non-invasive diagnostic or prognostic biomarkers for renal scarring. Experiment Overall Design: Experimental pyelonephritis was produced by standard method of direct infection of rat kidney. In brief, animals were anesthetized with pentobarbital intraperitoneally. The kidneys were exposed through a midline abdominal incision. An inoculum of 1x109 colony-forming units / 0.1 ml of Escherchia coli was injected directly into bilateral renal cortex of Wister rat using 26-gauge needle. We used DS-17 or NU-14 strains, both of which has type 1 and P pili, and SEC strain, which has only type 1 pili. Control rats received isotonic saline instead of bacterial solution. Both test and control kidneys were harvested at 1, 2, 4 and 6 weeks after injection. The kidney samples (1x1x2 mm each) were obtained including the injection site, which was easily identified by surface color change. Then we cut the kidney into half; one was used for microscopic examination and the other half was immediately frozen in liquid nitrogen for later RNA extraction.
Project description:Renal scarring is a serious complication of chronic pyelonephritis due to vesicoureteral reflux, and requires specific biomarker for indication of early intervention. We investigated global expression profile of kidney during renal scarring formation using rat pyelonephritis model. An inoculum of the DS-17 strain Escherchia coli was injected directly into renal cortex of Wister rat. Histologically, renal scarring developed during 3 and 4 weeks after injection. The time course expression profile of approximately 20,500 genes was analyzed using high density oligonucleotide microarray followed by validation using real time RT-PCR. Most of up-regulated genes during this experimental renal scarring were associated with immune and defense response, including cytokines, chemokines, their receptors, complements, and adhesion molecules as well as proteins related to extra cellular matrix. These genes were up-regulated as early as 1 week after injection when histological examination did not show fibrotic change yet, peaked at 2 weeks and gradually decreased thereafter. However, a subset of cytokine genes is persistently activated even in 6 weeks after the injection, which are involved in TGF-β related tissue regeneration pathway or IL-1β related pathway. The products of these genes may potentially be the source of novel non-invasive diagnostic or prognostic biomarkers for renal scarring. Keywords: renal scarring, TGF-β , IL-1β
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: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.