Regulatory T cell differentiation is controlled by αKG-induced alterations in mitochondrial metabolism and lipid homeostasis.

Suppressive regulatory T cell (Treg) differentiation is controlled by diverse immunometabolic signaling pathways and intracellular metabolites. Here we show that cell-permeable α-ketoglutarate (αKG) alters the DNA methylation profile of naive CD4 T cells activated under Treg polarizing conditions, markedly attenuating FoxP3+ Treg differentiation and increasing inflammatory cytokines. Adoptive transfer of these T cells into tumor-bearing mice results in enhanced tumor infiltration, decreased FoxP3 expression, and delayed tumor growth.

C3HeB/FeJ Mice mimic many aspects of gene expression and pathobiological features of human hepatocellular carcinoma.

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remains a deadly cancer, underscoring the need for relevant preclinical models. Male C3HeB/FeJ mice model spontaneous HCC with some hepatocarcinogenesis susceptibility loci corresponding to syntenic regions of human chromosomes altered in HCC. We tested other properties of C3HeB/FeJ tumors for similarity to human HCC.

Applications of Bayesian network models in predicting types of hematological malignancies.

Network analysis is the preferred approach for the detection of subtle but coordinated changes in expression of an interacting and related set of genes. We introduce a novel method based on the analyses of coexpression networks and Bayesian networks, and we use this new method to classify two types of hematological malignancies; namely, acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS). Our classifier has an accuracy of 93%, a precision of 98%, and a recall of 90% on the training dataset (n = 366); which outperforms the results reported by other scholars on the same dataset.

Large-scale gene network analysis reveals the significance of extracellular matrix pathway and homeobox genes in acute myeloid leukemia: an introduction to the Pigengene package and its applications.

Background: The distinct types of hematological malignancies have different biological mechanisms and prognoses. For instance, myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) is generally indolent and low risk; however, it may transform into acute myeloid leukemia (AML), which is much more aggressive.

Methods: We develop a novel network analysis approach that uses expression of eigengenes to delineate the biological differences between these two diseases.

Pathway-GPS and SIGORA: identifying relevant pathways based on the over-representation of their gene-pair signatures.

Motivation. Predominant pathway analysis approaches treat pathways as collections of individual genes and consider all pathway members as equally informative. As a result, at times spurious and misleading pathways are inappropriately identified as statistically significant, solely due to components that they share with the more relevant pathways.

Profiling microRNA expression in bovine alveolar macrophages using RNA-seq.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are important regulators of gene expression and are known to play a key role in regulating both adaptive and innate immunity. Bovine alveolar macrophages (BAMs) help maintain lung homeostasis and constitute the front line of host defense against several infectious respiratory diseases, such as bovine tuberculosis. Little is known, however, about the role miRNAs play in these cells.

Next generation sequencing reveals the expression of a unique miRNA profile in response to a gram-positive bacterial infection.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are short, non-coding RNAs, which post-transcriptionally regulate gene expression and are proposed to play a key role in the regulation of innate and adaptive immunity. Here, we report a next generation sequencing (NGS) approach profiling the expression of miRNAs in primary bovine mammary epithelial cells (BMEs) at 1, 2, 4 and 6 hours post-infection with Streptococcus uberis, a causative agent of bovine mastitis. Analysing over 450 million sequencing reads, we found that 20% of the approximately 1,300 currently known bovine miRNAs are expressed in unchallenged BMEs.

InnateDB: systems biology of innate immunity and beyond--recent updates and continuing curation.

InnateDB (http://www.innatedb.com) is an integrated analysis platform that has been specifically designed to facilitate systems-level analyses of mammalian innate immunity networks, pathways and genes.

Curating the innate immunity interactome.

Background: The innate immune response is the first line of defence against invading pathogens and is regulated by complex signalling and transcriptional networks. Systems biology approaches promise to shed new light on the regulation of innate immunity through the analysis and modelling of these networks. A key initial step in this process is the contextual cataloguing of the components of this system and the molecular interactions that comprise these networks.