Journal: Nature Communications
Article Title: Endothelial cell responses in sepsis are attenuated by targeting truncated procalcitonin
doi: 10.1038/s41467-025-68199-x
Figure Lengend Snippet: a Endothelial cells were isolated from murine lungs and subjected to bulk RNA sequencing. Created in BioRender. Brabenec, L. ( https://BioRender.com/mpa96bi ) b MDA plot showing DEGs in color that were more than 2-fold differentially regulated ( p < 0.05) in mice after cecal ligation and puncture (CLP) vs. mice subjected to laparotomy only (sham). Limma uses an empirical Bayes shrinkage method to moderate the standard errors of the estimated log-fold changes, which includes t-tests foreach gene To control for multiple testing the Benjamini and Hochberg method was used. c Principal component analysis of normalized expression values for n = 6 mice/group 18 h after sepsis induction. d Volcano plot representing DEGs in color and labelling of the 10 most up- and down-regulated genes in murine pulmonary endothelium. Limma uses an empirical Bayes shrinkage method to moderate the standard errors of the estimated log-fold changes, which includes t-tests foreach gene To control for multiple testing the Benjamini and Hochberg method was used. e List of the 10 most up- and down-regulated genes including the procalcitonin encoding gene Calca . f Up- and ( g ) down-regulated pathways in murine endothelium in response to polymicrobial sepsis. Enrichment analysis, statistical significance was assessed using adjusted p values (FDR correction) to account for multiple testing. h VEGFa and VEGFc is downregulated in isolated murine pulmonary endothelial cells 18 h after injection of human procalcitonin in mice, n = 3. i Human pulmonary microvascular endothelial cells show increased Calca expression after treatment with sepsis patients serum. This could be abolished by the use of procalcitonin antibody, n = 4 (Healthy), n = 5 (Sepsis), p = 0.0427. j , k Calcrl and Ramp1 show no difference in gene expression, n = 4 (Healthy), n = 5 (Sepsis), p = 0.0035. l VEGFa was downregulated in human pulmonary microvascular endothelial cells when treated with serum of septic patients, n = 4 (Healthy), n = 5 (Sepsis), p = 0.0047. m Expression of genes from LPS-treated human cells in our CLP study. We then took the top 50 up-regulated DEGs from the 8 h LPS study and found that 36 of these were also annotated in our dataset. Mean expression values for these genes from our study were calculated per group and then presented as heatmap with values scaled by row. Cluster 1: All genes in this cluster were up-regulated upon CLP as for LPS 8 h, and almost all DEGs (except ICAM1 ) were reduced in expression after AB treatment. Cluster 2: Genes in this cluster were down-regulated in our dataset upon CPL, but not up-regulated as in the LPS study. Of note, these DEGs were stronger down-regulated after AB treatment. One LPS-DEG gene, VCAM1 , was also up-regulated after CLP, but expressed higher in AB-treated samples compared to non-AB-treated CLP controls. Unpaired t test, data presented as mean ± SEM. p values as indicated. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.
Article Snippet: Human pulmonary endothelial cells (PromoCell) were cultured in cell culture media and exposed to serum from human sepsis patients diluted 1:1 in serum-free media.
Techniques: Isolation, RNA Sequencing, Ligation, Control, Expressing, Injection, Gene Expression