1
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Dai R, Chu T, Zhang M, Wang X, Jourdon A, Wu F, Mariani J, Vaccarino FM, Lee D, Fullard JF, Hoffman GE, Roussos P, Wang Y, Wang X, Pinto D, Wang SH, Zhang C, Chen C, Liu C. Evaluating performance and applications of sample-wise cell deconvolution methods on human brain transcriptomic data. SCIENCE ADVANCES 2024; 10:eadh2588. [PMID: 38781336 PMCID: PMC11114236 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adh2588] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/13/2023] [Accepted: 01/05/2024] [Indexed: 05/25/2024]
Abstract
Sample-wise deconvolution methods estimate cell-type proportions and gene expressions in bulk tissue samples, yet their performance and biological applications remain unexplored, particularly in human brain transcriptomic data. Here, nine deconvolution methods were evaluated with sample-matched data from bulk tissue RNA sequencing (RNA-seq), single-cell/nuclei (sc/sn) RNA-seq, and immunohistochemistry. A total of 1,130,767 nuclei per cells from 149 adult postmortem brains and 72 organoid samples were used. The results showed the best performance of dtangle for estimating cell proportions and bMIND for estimating sample-wise cell-type gene expressions. For eight brain cell types, 25,273 cell-type eQTLs were identified with deconvoluted expressions (decon-eQTLs). The results showed that decon-eQTLs explained more schizophrenia GWAS heritability than bulk tissue or single-cell eQTLs did alone. Differential gene expressions associated with Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia, and brain development were also examined using the deconvoluted data. Our findings, which were replicated in bulk tissue and single-cell data, provided insights into the biological applications of deconvoluted data in multiple brain disorders.
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Affiliation(s)
- Rujia Dai
- Department of Psychiatry, SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, NY, USA
| | - Tianyao Chu
- MOE Key Laboratory of Rare Pediatric Diseases & Hunan Key Laboratory of Medical Genetics, School of Life Sciences, and Department of Psychiatry, The Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, China
| | - Ming Zhang
- MOE Key Laboratory of Rare Pediatric Diseases & Hunan Key Laboratory of Medical Genetics, School of Life Sciences, and Department of Psychiatry, The Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, China
| | - Xuan Wang
- MOE Key Laboratory of Rare Pediatric Diseases & Hunan Key Laboratory of Medical Genetics, School of Life Sciences, and Department of Psychiatry, The Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, China
| | | | - Feinan Wu
- Child Study Center, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
| | | | - Flora M. Vaccarino
- Child Study Center, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
- Department of Neuroscience, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
| | - Donghoon Lee
- Center for Disease Neurogenomics, Departments of Psychiatry and Genetics and Genomic Science, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA
| | - John F. Fullard
- Center for Disease Neurogenomics, Departments of Psychiatry and Genetics and Genomic Science, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA
| | - Gabriel E. Hoffman
- Center for Disease Neurogenomics, Departments of Psychiatry and Genetics and Genomic Science, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA
| | - Panos Roussos
- Center for Disease Neurogenomics, Departments of Psychiatry and Genetics and Genomic Science, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA
| | - Yue Wang
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA, USA
| | - Xusheng Wang
- Department of Biology, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND, USA
| | - Dalila Pinto
- Departments of Psychiatry and Genetics and Genomic Sciences, Mindich Child Health and Development Institute, and Icahn Genomics Institute for Data Science and Genomic Technology, Seaver Autism Center, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA
| | - Sidney H. Wang
- Center for Human Genetics, The Brown foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, TX, USA
| | - Chunling Zhang
- Department of Neuroscience & Physiology, SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, NY, USA
| | | | - Chao Chen
- MOE Key Laboratory of Rare Pediatric Diseases & Hunan Key Laboratory of Medical Genetics, School of Life Sciences, and Department of Psychiatry, The Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, China
| | - Chunyu Liu
- Department of Psychiatry, SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, NY, USA
- MOE Key Laboratory of Rare Pediatric Diseases & Hunan Key Laboratory of Medical Genetics, School of Life Sciences, and Department of Psychiatry, The Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, China
- Department of Neuroscience & Physiology, SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, NY, USA
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2
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Nguyen H, Nguyen H, Tran D, Draghici S, Nguyen T. Fourteen years of cellular deconvolution: methodology, applications, technical evaluation and outstanding challenges. Nucleic Acids Res 2024; 52:4761-4783. [PMID: 38619038 PMCID: PMC11109966 DOI: 10.1093/nar/gkae267] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/26/2023] [Revised: 03/01/2024] [Accepted: 04/02/2024] [Indexed: 04/16/2024] Open
Abstract
Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-Seq) is a recent technology that allows for the measurement of the expression of all genes in each individual cell contained in a sample. Information at the single-cell level has been shown to be extremely useful in many areas. However, performing single-cell experiments is expensive. Although cellular deconvolution cannot provide the same comprehensive information as single-cell experiments, it can extract cell-type information from bulk RNA data, and therefore it allows researchers to conduct studies at cell-type resolution from existing bulk datasets. For these reasons, a great effort has been made to develop such methods for cellular deconvolution. The large number of methods available, the requirement of coding skills, inadequate documentation, and lack of performance assessment all make it extremely difficult for life scientists to choose a suitable method for their experiment. This paper aims to fill this gap by providing a comprehensive review of 53 deconvolution methods regarding their methodology, applications, performance, and outstanding challenges. More importantly, the article presents a benchmarking of all these 53 methods using 283 cell types from 30 tissues of 63 individuals. We also provide an R package named DeconBenchmark that allows readers to execute and benchmark the reviewed methods (https://github.com/tinnlab/DeconBenchmark).
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Affiliation(s)
- Hung Nguyen
- Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, USA
| | - Ha Nguyen
- Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, USA
| | - Duc Tran
- Department of Medicine, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA
| | - Sorin Draghici
- Department of Computer Science, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, USA
- Advaita Bioinformatics, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
| | - Tin Nguyen
- Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, USA
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3
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Bozorgmehr N, Syed H, Mashhouri S, Walker J, Elahi S. Transcriptomic profiling of peripheral blood cells in HPV-associated carcinoma patients receiving combined valproic acid and avelumab. Mol Oncol 2024; 18:1209-1230. [PMID: 37681284 PMCID: PMC11077001 DOI: 10.1002/1878-0261.13519] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/09/2023] [Revised: 07/27/2023] [Accepted: 09/05/2023] [Indexed: 09/09/2023] Open
Abstract
Human papillomavirus (HPV)-associated cancer continues to evade the immune system by promoting a suppressive tumor microenvironment. Therefore, immunotherapy appears to be a promising approach for targeting HPV-associated tumors. We hypothesized that valproic acid (VA) as an epigenetic agent combined with avelumab may enhance the antitumor immunity in HPV-associated solid tumors. We performed bulk RNA-sequencing (RNA-Seq) on total peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of seven nonresponders (NRs) and four responders (Rs). A total of 39 samples (e.g., pretreatment, post-VA, postavelumab, and endpoint) were analyzed. Also, we quantified plasma analytes and performed flow cytometry. We observed a differential pattern in immune response following treatment with VA and/or avelumab in NRs vs. Rs. A significant upregulation of transcripts associated with NETosis [the formation of neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs)] and neutrophil degranulation pathways was linked to the presence of a myeloid-derived suppressor cell signature in NRs. We noted the elevation of IL-8/IL-18 cytokines and a distinct transcriptome signature at the baseline and endpoint in NRs. By using the receiver operator characteristics, we identified a cutoff value for the plasma IL-8/IL-18 to discriminate NRs from Rs. We found differential therapeutic effects for VA and avelumab in NRs vs. Rs. Thus, our results imply that measuring the plasma IL-8/IL-18 and bulk RNA-Seq of PBMCs may serve as valuable biomarkers to predict immunotherapy outcomes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Najmeh Bozorgmehr
- Division of Foundational Sciences, School of DentistryUniversity of AlbertaEdmontonABCanada
| | - Hussain Syed
- Division of Foundational Sciences, School of DentistryUniversity of AlbertaEdmontonABCanada
| | - Siavash Mashhouri
- Division of Foundational Sciences, School of DentistryUniversity of AlbertaEdmontonABCanada
| | - John Walker
- Department of Medical OncologyUniversity of AlbertaEdmontonABCanada
| | - Shokrollah Elahi
- Division of Foundational Sciences, School of DentistryUniversity of AlbertaEdmontonABCanada
- Department of Medical OncologyUniversity of AlbertaEdmontonABCanada
- Faculty of Medicine and DentistryLi Ka Shing Institute of VirologyUniversity of AlbertaEdmontonABCanada
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Vathrakokoili Pournara A, Miao Z, Beker OY, Nolte N, Brazma A, Papatheodorou I. CATD: a reproducible pipeline for selecting cell-type deconvolution methods across tissues. BIOINFORMATICS ADVANCES 2024; 4:vbae048. [PMID: 38638280 PMCID: PMC11023940 DOI: 10.1093/bioadv/vbae048] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/09/2023] [Revised: 02/20/2024] [Accepted: 03/21/2024] [Indexed: 04/20/2024]
Abstract
Motivation Cell-type deconvolution methods aim to infer cell composition from bulk transcriptomic data. The proliferation of developed methods coupled with inconsistent results obtained in many cases, highlights the pressing need for guidance in the selection of appropriate methods. Additionally, the growing accessibility of single-cell RNA sequencing datasets, often accompanied by bulk expression from related samples enable the benchmark of existing methods. Results In this study, we conduct a comprehensive assessment of 31 methods, utilizing single-cell RNA-sequencing data from diverse human and mouse tissues. Employing various simulation scenarios, we reveal the efficacy of regression-based deconvolution methods, highlighting their sensitivity to reference choices. We investigate the impact of bulk-reference differences, incorporating variables such as sample, study and technology. We provide validation using a gold standard dataset from mononuclear cells and suggest a consensus prediction of proportions when ground truth is not available. We validated the consensus method on data from the stomach and studied its spillover effect. Importantly, we propose the use of the critical assessment of transcriptomic deconvolution (CATD) pipeline which encompasses functionalities for generating references and pseudo-bulks and running implemented deconvolution methods. CATD streamlines simultaneous deconvolution of numerous bulk samples, providing a practical solution for speeding up the evaluation of newly developed methods. Availability and implementation https://github.com/Papatheodorou-Group/CATD_snakemake.
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Affiliation(s)
- Anna Vathrakokoili Pournara
- European Molecular Biology Laboratory, European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), Wellcome Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridge, CB10 1SD, United Kingdom
| | - Zhichao Miao
- European Molecular Biology Laboratory, European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), Wellcome Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridge, CB10 1SD, United Kingdom
- Open Targets, Wellcome Genome Campus, Hinxton CB10 1SD, United Kingdom
- GMU-GIBH Joint School of Life Sciences, Guangzhou Laboratory, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, 511436, China
| | - Ozgur Yilimaz Beker
- European Molecular Biology Laboratory, European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), Wellcome Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridge, CB10 1SD, United Kingdom
- Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences, Sabanci University, Tuzla 34956, Turkey
| | - Nadja Nolte
- European Molecular Biology Laboratory, European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), Wellcome Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridge, CB10 1SD, United Kingdom
- Department of Biotechnology and Systems Biology, National Institute of Biology, Ljubljana, 121-1000, Slovenia
| | - Alvis Brazma
- European Molecular Biology Laboratory, European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), Wellcome Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridge, CB10 1SD, United Kingdom
| | - Irene Papatheodorou
- European Molecular Biology Laboratory, European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), Wellcome Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridge, CB10 1SD, United Kingdom
- Open Targets, Wellcome Genome Campus, Hinxton CB10 1SD, United Kingdom
- Earlham Institute, Norwich Research Park, Norwich NR4 7UZ, United Kingdom
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5
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Gershon R, Polevikov A, Karepov Y, Shenkar A, Ben-Horin I, Alter Regev T, Dror-Levinsky M, Lipczyc K, Gasri-Plotnitsky L, Diamant G, Shapira N, Bensimhon B, Hagai A, Shahar T, Grossman R, Ram Z, Volovitz I. Frequencies of 4 tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes potently predict survival in glioblastoma, an immune desert. Neuro Oncol 2024; 26:473-487. [PMID: 37870293 PMCID: PMC10912003 DOI: 10.1093/neuonc/noad204] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/21/2023] [Indexed: 10/24/2023] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND GBM is an aggressive grade 4 primary brain tumor (BT), with a 5%-13% 5-year survival. Most human GBMs manifest as immunologically "cold" tumors or "immune deserts," yet the promoting or suppressive roles of specific lymphocytes within the GBM tumor microenvironment (TME) is of considerable debate. METHODS We used meticulous multiparametric flow cytometry (FC) to determine the lymphocytic frequencies in 102 GBMs, lower-grade gliomas, brain metastases, and nontumorous brain specimen. FC-attained frequencies were compared with frequencies estimated by "digital cytometry." The FC-derived data were combined with the patients' demographic, clinical, molecular, histopathological, radiological, and survival data. RESULTS Comparison of FC-derived data to CIBERSORT-estimated data revealed the poor capacity of digital cytometry to estimate cell frequencies below 0.2%, the frequency range of most immune cells in BTs. Isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH) mutation status was found to affect TME composition more than the gliomas' pathological grade. Combining FC and survival data disclosed that unlike other cancer types, the frequency of helper T cells (Th) and cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL) correlated negatively with glioma survival. In contrast, the frequencies of γδ-T cells and CD56bright natural killer cells correlated positively with survival. A composite parameter combining the frequencies of these 4 tumoral lymphocytes separated the survival curves of GBM patients with a median difference of 10 months (FC-derived data; P < .0001, discovery cohort), or 4.1 months (CIBERSORT-estimated data; P = .01, validation cohort). CONCLUSIONS The frequencies of 4 TME lymphocytes strongly correlate with the survival of patients with GBM, a tumor considered an immune desert.
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Affiliation(s)
- Rotem Gershon
- The Cancer Immunotherapy Laboratory, The Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Tel-Aviv, Israel
| | - Antonina Polevikov
- The Cancer Immunotherapy Laboratory, The Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Tel-Aviv, Israel
| | - Yevgeny Karepov
- Neurosurgery Department, The Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Tel-Aviv, Israel
| | - Anatoly Shenkar
- The Cancer Immunotherapy Laboratory, The Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Tel-Aviv, Israel
| | - Idan Ben-Horin
- The Cancer Immunotherapy Laboratory, The Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Tel-Aviv, Israel
- Oncology Department, The Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Tel-Aviv, Israel
| | - Tal Alter Regev
- The Cancer Immunotherapy Laboratory, The Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Tel-Aviv, Israel
| | - Meytal Dror-Levinsky
- The Cancer Immunotherapy Laboratory, The Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Tel-Aviv, Israel
| | - Kelly Lipczyc
- The Cancer Immunotherapy Laboratory, The Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Tel-Aviv, Israel
| | - Lital Gasri-Plotnitsky
- The Cancer Immunotherapy Laboratory, The Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Tel-Aviv, Israel
| | - Gil Diamant
- The Cancer Immunotherapy Laboratory, The Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Tel-Aviv, Israel
- Neurosurgery Department, The Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Tel-Aviv, Israel
| | - Nati Shapira
- The Cancer Immunotherapy Laboratory, The Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Tel-Aviv, Israel
- Neurosurgery Department, The Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Tel-Aviv, Israel
| | - Barak Bensimhon
- The Cancer Immunotherapy Laboratory, The Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Tel-Aviv, Israel
| | - Aharon Hagai
- The Cancer Immunotherapy Laboratory, The Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Tel-Aviv, Israel
| | - Tal Shahar
- Neurosurgery Department, The Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Tel-Aviv, Israel
| | - Rachel Grossman
- Neurosurgery Department, The Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Tel-Aviv, Israel
| | - Zvi Ram
- Neurosurgery Department, The Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Tel-Aviv, Israel
| | - Ilan Volovitz
- The Cancer Immunotherapy Laboratory, The Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Tel-Aviv, Israel
- Neurosurgery Department, The Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Tel-Aviv, Israel
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6
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Garmire LX, Li Y, Huang Q, Xu C, Teichmann SA, Kaminski N, Pellegrini M, Nguyen Q, Teschendorff AE. Challenges and perspectives in computational deconvolution of genomics data. Nat Methods 2024; 21:391-400. [PMID: 38374264 DOI: 10.1038/s41592-023-02166-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/04/2022] [Accepted: 12/26/2023] [Indexed: 02/21/2024]
Abstract
Deciphering cell-type heterogeneity is crucial for systematically understanding tissue homeostasis and its dysregulation in diseases. Computational deconvolution is an efficient approach for estimating cell-type abundances from a variety of omics data. Despite substantial methodological progress in computational deconvolution in recent years, challenges are still outstanding. Here we enlist four important challenges related to computational deconvolution: the quality of the reference data, generation of ground truth data, limitations of computational methodologies, and benchmarking design and implementation. Finally, we make recommendations on reference data generation, new directions of computational methodologies, and strategies to promote rigorous benchmarking.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lana X Garmire
- Department of Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
| | - Yijun Li
- Department of Biostatistics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
| | - Qianhui Huang
- Department of Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
| | - Chuan Xu
- Wellcome Sanger Institute, Wellcome Genome Campus, Hinxton, UK
| | | | - Naftali Kaminski
- Pulmonary, Critical Care & Sleep Medicine, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA
| | - Matteo Pellegrini
- Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA
| | - Quan Nguyen
- Institute for Molecular Bioscience, The University of Queensland and QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
| | - Andrew E Teschendorff
- CAS Key Laboratory of Computational Biology, Shanghai Institute of Nutrition and Health, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China
- UCL Cancer Institute, University College London, London, UK
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7
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Handin N, Yuan D, Ölander M, Wegler C, Karlsson C, Jansson-Löfmark R, Hjelmesæth J, Åsberg A, Lauschke VM, Artursson P. Proteome deconvolution of liver biopsies reveals hepatic cell composition as an important marker of fibrosis. Comput Struct Biotechnol J 2023; 21:4361-4369. [PMID: 37711184 PMCID: PMC10498185 DOI: 10.1016/j.csbj.2023.08.037] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/04/2023] [Revised: 08/31/2023] [Accepted: 08/31/2023] [Indexed: 09/16/2023] Open
Abstract
Human liver tissue is composed of heterogeneous mixtures of different cell types and their cellular stoichiometry can provide information on hepatic physiology and disease progression. Deconvolution algorithms for the identification of cell types and their proportions have recently been developed for transcriptomic data. However, no method for the deconvolution of bulk proteomics data has been presented to date. Here, we show that proteomes, which usually contain less data than transcriptomes, can provide useful information for cell type deconvolution using different algorithms. We demonstrate that proteomes from defined mixtures of cell lines, isolated primary liver cells, and human liver biopsies can be deconvoluted with high accuracy. In contrast to transcriptome-based deconvolution, liver tissue proteomes also provided information about extracellular compartments. Using deconvolution of proteomics data from liver biopsies of 56 patients undergoing Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery we show that proportions of immune and stellate cells correlate with inflammatory markers and altered composition of extracellular matrix proteins characteristic of early-stage fibrosis. Our results thus demonstrate that proteome deconvolution can be used as a molecular microscope for investigations of the composition of cell types, extracellular compartments, and for exploring cell-type specific pathological events. We anticipate that these findings will allow the refinement of retrospective analyses of the growing number of proteome datasets from various liver disease states and pave the way for AI-supported clinical and preclinical diagnostics.
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Affiliation(s)
- Niklas Handin
- Department of Pharmacy, Uppsala University, SE-75123 Uppsala, Sweden
| | - Di Yuan
- Department of Information Technology, Uppsala University, SE-75123 Uppsala, Sweden
| | - Magnus Ölander
- Department of Pharmacy, Uppsala University, SE-75123 Uppsala, Sweden
| | - Christine Wegler
- Department of Pharmacy, Uppsala University, SE-75123 Uppsala, Sweden
| | - Cecilia Karlsson
- Late-stage Development, Cardiovascular, Renal and Metabolism, BioPharmaceuticals R&D, AstraZeneca, Gothenburg SE-43183, Sweden
- Department of Molecular and Clinical Medicine, Institute of Medicine, Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, SE- 41345, Sweden
| | - Rasmus Jansson-Löfmark
- DMPK, Research and Early Development Cardiovascular, Renal and Metabolism, BioPharmaceuticals R&D, AstraZeneca, Gothenburg SE-43153, Sweden
| | - Jøran Hjelmesæth
- Morbid Obesity Centre, Department of Medi cine, Vestfold Hospital Trust, NO-3103 Tønsberg, Norway
- Department of Endocrinology, Morbid Obesity and Preventive Medicine, Institute of Clinical Medicine, University of Oslo, NO-0318 Oslo, Norway
| | - Anders Åsberg
- Department of Pharmacy, University of Oslo, NO-0316 Oslo, Norway
- Department of Transplanation Medicin, Oslo University Hospital-Rikshospitalet, NO-0424 Oslo, Norway
| | - Volker M. Lauschke
- Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden
- Dr Margarete Fischer-Bosch Institute of Clinical Pharmacology, Stuttgart, Germany
- University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
| | - Per Artursson
- Department of Pharmacy, Uppsala University, SE-75123 Uppsala, Sweden
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8
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Peng K, Nowicki TS, Campbell K, Vahed M, Peng D, Meng Y, Nagareddy A, Huang YN, Karlsberg A, Miller Z, Brito J, Nadel B, Pak VM, Abedalthagafi MS, Burkhardt AM, Alachkar H, Ribas A, Mangul S. Rigorous benchmarking of T-cell receptor repertoire profiling methods for cancer RNA sequencing. Brief Bioinform 2023; 24:bbad220. [PMID: 37291798 PMCID: PMC10359085 DOI: 10.1093/bib/bbad220] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/30/2022] [Revised: 05/02/2023] [Accepted: 05/24/2023] [Indexed: 06/10/2023] Open
Abstract
The ability to identify and track T-cell receptor (TCR) sequences from patient samples is becoming central to the field of cancer research and immunotherapy. Tracking genetically engineered T cells expressing TCRs that target specific tumor antigens is important to determine the persistence of these cells and quantify tumor responses. The available high-throughput method to profile TCR repertoires is generally referred to as TCR sequencing (TCR-Seq). However, the available TCR-Seq data are limited compared with RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq). In this paper, we have benchmarked the ability of RNA-Seq-based methods to profile TCR repertoires by examining 19 bulk RNA-Seq samples across 4 cancer cohorts including both T-cell-rich and T-cell-poor tissue types. We have performed a comprehensive evaluation of the existing RNA-Seq-based repertoire profiling methods using targeted TCR-Seq as the gold standard. We also highlighted scenarios under which the RNA-Seq approach is suitable and can provide comparable accuracy to the TCR-Seq approach. Our results show that RNA-Seq-based methods are able to effectively capture the clonotypes and estimate the diversity of TCR repertoires, as well as provide relative frequencies of clonotypes in T-cell-rich tissues and low-diversity repertoires. However, RNA-Seq-based TCR profiling methods have limited power in T-cell-poor tissues, especially in highly diverse repertoires of T-cell-poor tissues. The results of our benchmarking provide an additional appealing argument to incorporate RNA-Seq into the immune repertoire screening of cancer patients as it offers broader knowledge into the transcriptomic changes that exceed the limited information provided by TCR-Seq.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kerui Peng
- Department of Clinical Pharmacy, USC Alfred E. Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
| | - Theodore S Nowicki
- Department of Pediatrics, Division of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
- Department of Microbiology, Immunology, & Molecular Genetics, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
| | - Katie Campbell
- Department of Medicine, Division of Hematology-Oncology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
| | - Mohammad Vahed
- Department of Clinical Pharmacy, USC Alfred E. Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
| | - Dandan Peng
- Department of Quantitative and Computational Biology, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
| | - Yiting Meng
- Department of Clinical Pharmacy, USC Alfred E. Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
| | - Anish Nagareddy
- Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
| | - Yu-Ning Huang
- Department of Clinical Pharmacy, USC Alfred E. Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
| | - Aaron Karlsberg
- Department of Clinical Pharmacy, USC Alfred E. Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
| | - Zachary Miller
- Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, USC Alfred E. Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
| | - Jaqueline Brito
- Department of Clinical Pharmacy, USC Alfred E. Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
| | - Brian Nadel
- Department of Clinical Pharmacy, USC Alfred E. Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
- Department of Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
| | - Victoria M Pak
- Emory Nell Hodgson School of Nursing, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA
- Department of Epidemiology, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA
| | - Malak S Abedalthagafi
- Department of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, Emory University Hospital, Atlanta, GA, USA
- King Salman Center for Disability Research, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
| | - Amanda M Burkhardt
- Department of Clinical Pharmacy, USC Alfred E. Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
| | - Houda Alachkar
- Department of Clinical Pharmacy, USC Alfred E. Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
| | - Antoni Ribas
- Departments of Medicine (Hematology-Oncology), Surgery (Surgical Oncology) and Molecular & Medical Pharmacology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
| | - Serghei Mangul
- Department of Clinical Pharmacy, USC Alfred E. Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
- Department of Quantitative and Computational Biology, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
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9
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Dai R, Chu T, Zhang M, Wang X, Jourdon A, Wu F, Mariani J, Vaccarino FM, Lee D, Fullard JF, Hoffman GE, Roussos P, Wang Y, Wang X, Pinto D, Wang SH, Zhang C, Chen C, Liu C. Evaluating performance and applications of sample-wise cell deconvolution methods on human brain transcriptomic data. BIORXIV : THE PREPRINT SERVER FOR BIOLOGY 2023:2023.03.13.532468. [PMID: 36993743 PMCID: PMC10054947 DOI: 10.1101/2023.03.13.532468] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/05/2023]
Abstract
Sample-wise deconvolution methods have been developed to estimate cell-type proportions and gene expressions in bulk-tissue samples. However, the performance of these methods and their biological applications has not been evaluated, particularly on human brain transcriptomic data. Here, nine deconvolution methods were evaluated with sample-matched data from bulk-tissue RNAseq, single-cell/nuclei (sc/sn) RNAseq, and immunohistochemistry. A total of 1,130,767 nuclei/cells from 149 adult postmortem brains and 72 organoid samples were used. The results showed the best performance of dtangle for estimating cell proportions and bMIND for estimating sample-wise cell-type gene expression. For eight brain cell types, 25,273 cell-type eQTLs were identified with deconvoluted expressions (decon-eQTLs). The results showed that decon-eQTLs explained more schizophrenia GWAS heritability than bulk-tissue or single-cell eQTLs alone. Differential gene expression associated with multiple phenotypes were also examined using the deconvoluted data. Our findings, which were replicated in bulk-tissue RNAseq and sc/snRNAseq data, provided new insights into the biological applications of deconvoluted data.
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Affiliation(s)
- Rujia Dai
- Department of Psychiatry, SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, NY, USA
| | - Tianyao Chu
- Center for Medical Genetics & Hunan Key Laboratory of Medical Genetics, School of Life Sciences, Central South University, Changsha, China
| | - Ming Zhang
- Center for Medical Genetics & Hunan Key Laboratory of Medical Genetics, School of Life Sciences, Central South University, Changsha, China
| | - Xuan Wang
- Center for Medical Genetics & Hunan Key Laboratory of Medical Genetics, School of Life Sciences, Central South University, Changsha, China
| | | | - Feinan Wu
- Child Study Center, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
| | | | - Flora M Vaccarino
- Child Study Center, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
- Department of Neuroscience, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
| | - Donghoon Lee
- Center for Disease Neurogenomics, Departments of Psychiatry and Genetics and Genomic Science, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA
| | - John F Fullard
- Center for Disease Neurogenomics, Departments of Psychiatry and Genetics and Genomic Science, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA
| | - Gabriel E Hoffman
- Center for Disease Neurogenomics, Departments of Psychiatry and Genetics and Genomic Science, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA
| | - Panos Roussos
- Center for Disease Neurogenomics, Departments of Psychiatry and Genetics and Genomic Science, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA
| | - Yue Wang
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, VA, USA
| | - Xusheng Wang
- Department of Biology, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND, USA
| | - Dalila Pinto
- Department of Psychiatry, Department of Genetics and Genomic Sciences, Mindich Child Health and Development Institute, and Icahn Genomics Institute for Data Science and Genomic Technology, Seaver Autism Center, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA
| | - Sidney H Wang
- Center for Human Genetics, The Brown foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, TX, USA
| | - Chunling Zhang
- Department of Neuroscience & Physiology, SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, NY, USA
| | - Chao Chen
- Center for Medical Genetics & Hunan Key Laboratory of Medical Genetics, School of Life Sciences, Central South University, Changsha, China
| | - Chunyu Liu
- Department of Psychiatry, SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, NY, USA
- Center for Medical Genetics & Hunan Key Laboratory of Medical Genetics, School of Life Sciences, Central South University, Changsha, China
- Department of Neuroscience & Physiology, SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, NY, USA
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10
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Yao T, Liu Q, Tian W. Deconvolution of a Large Cohort of Placental Microarray Data Reveals Clinically Distinct Subtypes of Preeclampsia. Front Bioeng Biotechnol 2022; 10:917086. [PMID: 35910034 PMCID: PMC9326345 DOI: 10.3389/fbioe.2022.917086] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/10/2022] [Accepted: 06/13/2022] [Indexed: 11/28/2022] Open
Abstract
It has been well established that the dysfunctional placenta plays an important role in the pathogenesis of preeclampsia (PE), a hypertensive disorder in pregnancy. However, it is not well understood how individual cell types in the placenta are involved in placenta dysfunction because of limited single-cell studies of placenta with PE. Given that a high-resolution single-cell atlas in the placenta is now available, deconvolution of publicly available bulk PE transcriptome data may provide us with the opportunity to investigate the contribution of individual placental cell types to PE. Recent benchmark studies on deconvolution have provided suggestions on the strategy of marker gene selection and the choice of methodologies. In this study, we experimented with these suggestions by using real bulk data with known cell-type proportions and established a deconvolution pipeline using CIBERSORT. Applying the deconvolution pipeline to a large cohort of PE placental microarray data, we found that the proportions of trophoblast cells in the placenta were significantly different between PE and normal controls. We then predicted cell-type-level expression profiles for each sample using CIBERSORTx and found that the activities of several canonical PE-related pathways were significantly altered in specific subtypes of trophoblasts in PE. Finally, we constructed an integrated expression profile for each PE sample by combining the predicted cell-type-level expression profiles of several clinically relevant placental cell types and identified four clusters likely representing four PE subtypes with clinically distinct features. As such, our study showed that deconvolution of a large cohort of placental microarray provided new insights about the molecular mechanism of PE that would not be obtained by analyzing bulk expression profiles.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tian Yao
- State Key Laboratory of Genetic Engineering and Collaborative Innovation Center for Genetics and Development, Department of Computational Biology, School of Life Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
- Human Phenome Institute, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
| | - Qiming Liu
- State Key Laboratory of Genetic Engineering and Collaborative Innovation Center for Genetics and Development, Department of Computational Biology, School of Life Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
| | - Weidong Tian
- State Key Laboratory of Genetic Engineering and Collaborative Innovation Center for Genetics and Development, Department of Computational Biology, School of Life Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
- Children’s Hospital of Fudan University, Shanghai, China
- Qilu Children’s Hospital of Shandong University, Jinan, China
- *Correspondence: Weidong Tian,
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11
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Cai M, Yue M, Chen T, Liu J, Forno E, Lu X, Billiar T, Celedón J, McKennan C, Chen W, Wang J. Robust and accurate estimation of cellular fraction from tissue omics data via ensemble deconvolution. Bioinformatics 2022; 38:3004-3010. [PMID: 35438146 PMCID: PMC9991889 DOI: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btac279] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/10/2022] [Revised: 03/22/2022] [Accepted: 04/13/2022] [Indexed: 01/04/2023] Open
Abstract
MOTIVATION Tissue-level omics data such as transcriptomics and epigenomics are an average across diverse cell types. To extract cell-type-specific (CTS) signals, dozens of cellular deconvolution methods have been proposed to infer cell-type fractions from tissue-level data. However, these methods produce vastly different results under various real data settings. Simulation-based benchmarking studies showed no universally best deconvolution approaches. There have been attempts of ensemble methods, but they only aggregate multiple single-cell references or reference-free deconvolution methods. RESULTS To achieve a robust estimation of cellular fractions, we proposed EnsDeconv (Ensemble Deconvolution), which adopts CTS robust regression to synthesize the results from 11 single deconvolution methods, 10 reference datasets, 5 marker gene selection procedures, 5 data normalizations and 2 transformations. Unlike most benchmarking studies based on simulations, we compiled four large real datasets of 4937 tissue samples in total with measured cellular fractions and bulk gene expression from different tissues. Comprehensive evaluations demonstrated that EnsDeconv yields more stable, robust and accurate fractions than existing methods. We illustrated that EnsDeconv estimated cellular fractions enable various CTS downstream analyses such as differential fractions associated with clinical variables. We further extended EnsDeconv to analyze bulk DNA methylation data. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION EnsDeconv is freely available as an R-package from https://github.com/randel/EnsDeconv. The RNA microarray data from the TRAUMA study are available and can be accessed in GEO (GSE36809). The demographic and clinical phenotypes can be shared on reasonable request to the corresponding authors. The RNA-seq data from the EVAPR study cannot be shared publicly due to the privacy of individuals that participated in the clinical research in compliance with the IRB approval at the University of Pittsburgh. The RNA microarray data from the FHS study are available from dbGaP (phs000007.v32.p13). The RNA-seq data from ROS study is downloaded from AD Knowledge Portal. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
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Affiliation(s)
- Manqi Cai
- Department of Biostatistics, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15261, USA
| | - Molin Yue
- Department of Biostatistics, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15261, USA
| | - Tianmeng Chen
- Department of Surgery, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA
- Department of Pathology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA
| | - Jinling Liu
- Department of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering, Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla, MO 65409, USA
- Department of Biological Sciences, Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla, MO 65409, USA
| | - Erick Forno
- Department of Pediatrics, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15224, USA
| | - Xinghua Lu
- Department of Biomedical Informatics, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15206, USA
| | - Timothy Billiar
- Department of Surgery, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA
| | - Juan Celedón
- Department of Pediatrics, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15224, USA
| | - Chris McKennan
- Department of Statistics, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA
| | - Wei Chen
- Department of Pediatrics, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15224, USA
| | - Jiebiao Wang
- Department of Biostatistics, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15261, USA
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12
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Tosevska A, Ghosh S, Ganguly A, Cappelletti M, Kallapur SG, Pellegrini M, Devaskar SU. Integrated analysis of an in vivo model of intra-nasal exposure to instilled air pollutants reveals cell-type specific responses in the placenta. Sci Rep 2022; 12:8438. [PMID: 35589747 PMCID: PMC9119931 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-12340-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/05/2022] [Accepted: 05/06/2022] [Indexed: 01/19/2023] Open
Abstract
The placenta is a heterogeneous organ whose development involves complex interactions of trophoblasts with decidual, vascular, and immune cells at the fetal-maternal interface. It maintains a critical balance between maternal and fetal homeostasis. Placental dysfunction can lead to adverse pregnancy outcomes including intra-uterine growth restriction, pre-eclampsia, or pre-term birth. Exposure to environmental pollutants contributes to the development of placental abnormalities, with poorly understood molecular underpinning. Here we used a mouse (C57BL/6) model of environmental pollutant exposure by administration of a particulate matter (SRM1649b at 300 μg/day/mouse) suspension intra-nasally beginning 2 months before conception and during gestation, in comparison to saline-exposed controls. Placental transcriptomes, at day 19 of gestation, were determined using bulk RNA-seq from whole placentas of exposed (n = 4) and control (n = 4) animals and scRNAseq of three distinct placental layers, followed by flow cytometry analysis of the placental immune cell landscape. Our results indicate a reduction in vascular placental cells, especially cells responsible for structural integrity, and increase in trophoblast proliferation in animals exposed to particulate matter. Pollution-induced inflammation was also evident, especially in the decidual layer. These data indicate that environmental exposure to air pollutants triggers changes in the placental cellular composition, mediating adverse pregnancy outcomes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Anela Tosevska
- grid.19006.3e0000 0000 9632 6718Department of Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA USA ,grid.22937.3d0000 0000 9259 8492Present Address: Division of Rheumatology, Internal Medicine III, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
| | - Shubhamoy Ghosh
- grid.19006.3e0000 0000 9632 6718Division of Neonatology & Developmental Biology, Department of Pediatrics, and the UCLA Children’s Discovery & Innovation Institute, David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California Los Angeles, 10883, Le Conte Avenue, MDCC-22-412, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1752 USA
| | - Amit Ganguly
- grid.19006.3e0000 0000 9632 6718Division of Neonatology & Developmental Biology, Department of Pediatrics, and the UCLA Children’s Discovery & Innovation Institute, David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California Los Angeles, 10883, Le Conte Avenue, MDCC-22-412, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1752 USA
| | - Monica Cappelletti
- grid.19006.3e0000 0000 9632 6718Division of Neonatology & Developmental Biology, Department of Pediatrics, and the UCLA Children’s Discovery & Innovation Institute, David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California Los Angeles, 10883, Le Conte Avenue, MDCC-22-412, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1752 USA
| | - Suhas G. Kallapur
- grid.19006.3e0000 0000 9632 6718Division of Neonatology & Developmental Biology, Department of Pediatrics, and the UCLA Children’s Discovery & Innovation Institute, David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California Los Angeles, 10883, Le Conte Avenue, MDCC-22-412, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1752 USA
| | - Matteo Pellegrini
- grid.19006.3e0000 0000 9632 6718Department of Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA USA
| | - Sherin U. Devaskar
- grid.19006.3e0000 0000 9632 6718Division of Neonatology & Developmental Biology, Department of Pediatrics, and the UCLA Children’s Discovery & Innovation Institute, David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California Los Angeles, 10883, Le Conte Avenue, MDCC-22-412, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1752 USA
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