G protein-coupled receptor kinase 5 regulates thrombin signaling in platelets via PAR-1.

The interindividual variation in the functional response of platelets to activation by agonists is heritable. Genome-wide association studies (GWASs) of quantitative measures of platelet function have identified fewer than 20 distinctly associated variants, some with unknown mechanisms. Here, we report GWASs of pathway-specific functional responses to agonism by adenosine 5'-diphosphate, a glycoprotein VI-specific collagen mimetic, and thrombin receptor-agonist peptides, each specific to 1 of the G protein-coupled receptors PAR-1 and PAR-4, in subsets of 1562 individuals. We identified an association (P = 2.75 × 10-40) between a common intronic variant, rs10886430, in the G protein-coupled receptor kinase 5 gene (GRK5) and the sensitivity of platelets to activate through PAR-1. The variant resides in a megakaryocyte-specific enhancer that is bound by the transcription factors GATA1 and MEIS1. The minor allele (G) is associated with fewer GRK5 transcripts in platelets and the greater sensitivity of platelets to activate through PAR-1. We show that thrombin-mediated activation of human platelets causes binding of GRK5 to PAR-1 and that deletion of the mouse homolog Grk5 enhances thrombin-induced platelet activation sensitivity and increases platelet accumulation at the site of vascular injury. This corroborates evidence that the human G allele of rs10886430 is associated with a greater risk for cardiovascular disease. In summary, by combining the results of pathway-specific GWASs and expression quantitative trait locus studies in humans with the results from platelet function studies in Grk5-/- mice, we obtain evidence that GRK5 regulates the human platelet response to thrombin via the PAR-1 pathway.

New Approach to Accelerated Image Annotation by Leveraging Virtual Reality and Cloud Computing.

Three-dimensional imaging is at the core of medical imaging and is becoming a standard in biological research. As a result, there is an increasing need to visualize, analyze and interact with data in a natural three-dimensional context. By combining stereoscopy and motion tracking, commercial virtual reality (VR) headsets provide a solution to this critical visualization challenge by allowing users to view volumetric image stacks in a highly intuitive fashion. While optimizing the visualization and interaction process in VR remains an active topic, one of the most pressing issue is how to utilize VR for annotation and analysis of data. Annotating data is often a required step for training machine learning algorithms. For example, enhancing the ability to annotate complex three-dimensional data in biological research as newly acquired data may come in limited quantities. Similarly, medical data annotation is often time-consuming and requires expert knowledge to identify structures of interest correctly. Moreover, simultaneous data analysis and visualization in VR is computationally demanding. Here, we introduce a new procedure to visualize, interact, annotate and analyze data by combining VR with cloud computing. VR is leveraged to provide natural interactions with volumetric representations of experimental imaging data. In parallel, cloud computing performs costly computations to accelerate the data annotation with minimal input required from the user. We demonstrate multiple proof-of-concept applications of our approach on volumetric fluorescent microscopy images of mouse neurons and tumor or organ annotations in medical images.