DMD Pluripotent Stem Cell Derived Cardiac Cells Recapitulate in vitro Human Cardiac Pathophysiology.

Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a severe genetic disorder characterized by the lack of functional dystrophin. DMD is associated with progressive dilated cardiomyopathy, eventually leading to heart failure as the main cause of death in DMD patients. Although several molecular mechanisms leading to the DMD cardiomyocyte (DMD-CM) death were described, mostly in mouse model, no suitable human CM model was until recently available together with proper clarification of the DMD-CM phenotype and delay in cardiac symptoms manifestation. We obtained several independent dystrophin-deficient human pluripotent stem cell (hPSC) lines from DMD patients and CRISPR/Cas9-generated DMD gene mutation. We differentiated DMD-hPSC into cardiac cells (CC) creating a human DMD-CC disease model. We observed that mutation-carrying cells were less prone to differentiate into CCs. DMD-CCs demonstrated an enhanced cell death rate in time. Furthermore, ion channel expression was altered in terms of potassium (Kir2.1 overexpression) and calcium handling (dihydropyridine receptor overexpression). DMD-CCs exhibited increased time of calcium transient rising compared to aged-matched control, suggesting mishandling of calcium release. We observed mechanical impairment (hypocontractility), bradycardia, increased heart rate variability, and blunted ß-adrenergic response connected with remodeling of ß-adrenergic receptors expression in DMD-CCs. Overall, these results indicated that our DMD-CC models are functionally affected by dystrophin-deficiency associated and recapitulate functional defects and cardiac wasting observed in the disease. It offers an accurate tool to study human cardiomyopathy progression and test therapies in vitro.

Post-Translational Modifications and Diastolic Calcium Leak Associated to the Novel RyR2-D3638A Mutation Lead to CPVT in Patient-Specific hiPSC-Derived Cardiomyocytes.

BACKGROUND: Sarcoplasmic reticulum Ca2+ leak and post-translational modifications under stress have been implicated in catecholaminergic polymorphic ventricular tachycardia (CPVT), a highly lethal inherited arrhythmogenic disorder. Human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) offer a unique opportunity for disease modeling. OBJECTIVE: The aims were to obtain functional hiPSC-derived cardiomyocytes from a CPVT patient harboring a novel ryanodine receptor (RyR2) mutation and model the syndrome, drug responses and investigate the molecular mechanisms associated to the CPVT syndrome. METHODS: Patient-specific cardiomyocytes were generated from a young athletic female diagnosed with CPVT. The contractile, intracellular Ca2+ handling and electrophysiological properties as well as the RyR2 macromolecular remodeling were studied. RESULTS: Exercise stress electrocardiography revealed polymorphic ventricular tachycardia when treated with metoprolol and marked improvement with flecainide alone. We found abnormal stress-induced contractile and electrophysiological properties associated with sarcoplasmic reticulum Ca2+ leak in CPVT hiPSC-derived cardiomyocytes. We found inadequate response to metoprolol and a potent response of flecainide. Stabilizing RyR2 with a Rycal compound prevents those abnormalities specifically in CPVT hiPSC-derived cardiomyocytes. The RyR2-D3638A mutation is located in the conformational change inducing-central core domain and leads to RyR2 macromolecular remodeling including depletion of PP2A and Calstabin2. CONCLUSION: We identified a novel RyR2-D3638A mutation causing 3D conformational defects and aberrant biophysical properties associated to RyR2 macromolecular complex post-translational remodeling. The molecular remodeling is for the first time revealed using patient-specific hiPSC-derived cardiomyocytes which may explain the CPVT proband's resistance. Our study promotes hiPSC-derived cardiomyocytes as a suitable model for disease modeling, testing new therapeutic compounds, personalized medicine and deciphering underlying molecular mechanisms.

Extraction and analysis of signatures from the Gene Expression Omnibus by the crowd.

Gene expression data are accumulating exponentially in public repositories. Reanalysis and integration of themed collections from these studies may provide new insights, but requires further human curation. Here we report a crowdsourcing project to annotate and reanalyse a large number of gene expression profiles from Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO). Through a massive open online course on Coursera, over 70 participants from over 25 countries identify and annotate 2,460 single-gene perturbation signatures, 839 disease versus normal signatures, and 906 drug perturbation signatures. All these signatures are unique and are manually validated for quality. Global analysis of these signatures confirms known associations and identifies novel associations between genes, diseases and drugs. The manually curated signatures are used as a training set to develop classifiers for extracting similar signatures from the entire GEO repository. We develop a web portal to serve these signatures for query, download and visualization.

Atomic force microscopy combined with human pluripotent stem cell derived cardiomyocytes for biomechanical sensing.

Cardiomyocyte contraction and relaxation are important parameters of cardiac function altered in many heart pathologies. Biosensing of these parameters represents an important tool in drug development and disease modeling. Human embryonic stem cells and especially patient specific induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes are well established as cardiac disease model.. Here, a live stem cell derived embryoid body (EB) based cardiac cell syncytium served as a biorecognition element coupled to the microcantilever probe from atomic force microscope thus providing reliable micromechanical cellular biosensor suitable for whole-day testing. The biosensor was optimized regarding the type of cantilever, temperature and exchange of media; in combination with standardized protocol, it allowed testing of compounds and conditions affecting the biomechanical properties of EB. The studied effectors included calcium , drugs modulating the catecholaminergic fight-or-flight stress response such as the beta-adrenergic blocker metoprolol and the beta-adrenergic agonist isoproterenol. Arrhythmogenic effects were studied using caffeine. Furthermore, with EBs originating from patient's stem cells, this biosensor can help to characterize heart diseases such as dystrophies.

Evolutionary Pressures on the Yeast Transcriptome.

Codon usage bias (CUB) is the well known phenomenon that the frequency of synonymous codons is unequal. This is presumably the result of adaptive pressures favouring some codons over others. The underlying reason for this pressure is unknown, although a large number of possible driver mechanisms have been proposed; one of them is the decoding time. The standard model to calculate decoding time is the Gromadski-Rodnina model. Yet, recently, there have been a number of studies arguing to the effect that this conventional speed-model is not relevant to understand the dynamics of translation. However, results remain inconclusive so far. This contribution takes a novel approach to address this issue based on comparing mRNA with random synonymous variants to estimate the evolutionary pressures that have acted on the transcriptome. It emerges that over 70 percent of ORFs have been subject to a strong selection pressure for translation speed and that there is also a strong selection pressure for the avoidance of traffic jams. Finally, it is also shown that both homogeneous and very heterogeneous transcripts are over-represented. These results corroborate the validity of the Gromadski-Rodnina model.

Mutation frequency dynamics in HPRT locus in culture-adapted human embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells correspond to their differentiated counterparts.

The genomic destabilization associated with the adaptation of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) to culture conditions or the reprogramming of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) increases the risk of tumorigenesis upon the clinical use of these cells and decreases their value as a model for cell biology studies. Base excision repair (BER), a major genomic integrity maintenance mechanism, has been shown to fail during hESC adaptation. Here, we show that the increase in the mutation frequency (MF) caused by the inhibition of BER was similar to that caused by the hESC adaptation process. The increase in MF reflected the failure of DNA maintenance mechanisms and the subsequent increase in MF rather than being due solely to the accumulation of mutants over a prolonged period, as was previously suggested. The increase in the ionizing-radiation-induced MF in adapted hESCs exceeded the induced MF in nonadapted hESCs and differentiated cells. Unlike hESCs, the overall DNA maintenance in iPSCs, which was reflected by the MF, was similar to that in differentiated cells regardless of the time spent in culture and despite the upregulation of several genes responsible for genome maintenance during the reprogramming process. Taken together, our results suggest that the changes in BER activity during the long-term cultivation of hESCs increase the mutagenic burden, whereas neither reprogramming nor long-term propagation in culture changes the MF in iPSCs.

Nonlinear regression models for determination of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide content in human embryonic stem cells.

Recent evidence suggests that energy metabolism contributes to molecular mechanisms controlling stem cell identity. For example, human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) receive their metabolic energy mostly via glycolysis rather than mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation. This suggests a connection of metabolic homeostasis to stemness. Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) is an important cellular redox carrier and a cofactor for various metabolic pathways, including glycolysis. Therefore, accurate determination of NAD cellular levels and dynamics is of growing importance for understanding the physiology of stem cells. Conventional analytic methods for the determination of metabolite levels rely on linear calibration curves. However, in actual practice many two-enzyme cycling assays, such as the assay systems used in this work, display prominently nonlinear behavior. Here we present a diaphorase/lactate dehydrogenase NAD cycling assay optimized for hESCs, together with a mechanism-based, nonlinear regression models for the determination of NAD(+), NADH, and total NAD. We also present experimental data on metabolic homeostasis of hESC under various physiological conditions. We show that NAD(+)/NADH ratio varies considerably with time in culture after routine change of medium, while the total NAD content undergoes relatively minor changes. In addition, we show that the NAD(+)/NADH ratio, as well as the total NAD levels, vary between stem cells and their differentiated counterparts. Importantly, the NAD(+)/NADH ratio was found to be substantially higher in hESC-derived fibroblasts versus hESCs. Overall, our nonlinear mathematical model is applicable to other enzymatic amplification systems.

Adaptation to robust monolayer expansion produces human pluripotent stem cells with improved viability.

The generation of human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) of sufficient quantity and quality remains a major challenge for biomedical application. Here we present an efficient feeder-free, high-density monolayer system in which hPSCs become SSEA-3-high and gradually more viable than their feeder-dependent counterparts without changes attributed to culture adaptation. As a consequence, monolayer hPSCs possess advantages over their counterparts in embryoid body development, teratoma formation, freezing as a single-cell suspension, and colony-forming efficiency. Importantly, this monolayer culture system is reversible, preserving the competence of hPSCs to gradually reacquire features of colony growth, if necessary. Therefore, the monolayer culture system is highly suitable for long-term, large-scale propagation of hPSCs, which is necessary in drug development and pluripotent stem cell-based therapies.