Cell Biology

Following myocardial infarction (MI), myocardial cells undergo cell death, and the necrotic region is replaced by extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins such as collagens. Myofibroblasts are responsible for producing these ECM proteins. Cardiac myofibroblasts are differentiated from resident fibroblasts in response to inflammation. To date, genetically modified mice driven by the Periostin promoter and adeno-associated virus 9 (AAV9) carrying the Periostin promoter have been used for gene transfer into cardiac myofibroblasts. However, these methods require multiple steps and are time-consuming and expensive. Therefore, we developed a method for delivering genes into cardiac myofibroblasts using retroviruses. Specifically, the DNA of the target gene was transfected into Plat-E cells, which are packaging cells, to generate retroviruses. The virus-containing supernatant was then harvested, and the viruses were pelleted by centrifugation and suspended in PBS-containing polybrene. Subsequently, permanent occlusion of the left coronary artery was performed, and 20 μL of viral solution was immediately administered using a 29G needle at a position 1–2 mm below the ligation site in the heart of mice maintained in an open chest state. Using this method, we were able to introduce genes into the myofibroblasts of interest surrounding the MI site.

Daphnia magna is a well-established model organism in ecotoxicology, environmental monitoring, and genetics due to its sensitivity to pollutants, its pivotal role in freshwater ecosystems, and its well-characterized genome. Despite its extensive use in these fields, there is a notable lack of established protocols for developing primary cell culture systems and conducting transgenic studies in Daphnia spp. This study addresses these gaps by optimizing a medium and standardizing protocols for primary cell culture and transgenic experiments in D. magna. Primary cell cultures were established from both D. magna embryos and whole organisms, with medium optimization verified using XTT assay. Cell viability was sustained for over two months using a modified Schneider’s insect medium enriched with FBS, glucose, MEM vitamin mix, and selenium. DNA replication and cell proliferation were confirmed through BrdU labeling. Both mechanical and enzymatic passaging methods were compared, resulting in 20% and 10% cell attachment, respectively. For transgenic applications, this study successfully standardized plasmid-mediated lipofection and baculovirus-mediated transduction, achieving success rates of 52% and 45%. These findings represent a pioneering effort in D. magna embryonic cell culture, offering a reliable in vitro platform for future biological research, including ecotoxicological and epigenetic investigations. The established protocols and optimized cell culture medium have significant implications for advancing crustacean cell line research and transgenic model development, enhancing our understanding of biological processes in controlled laboratory environments.

Macrophages are known for engulfing and digesting pathogens and dead cells through a specialized form of endocytosis called phagocytosis. Unfortunately, many macrophage cell lines are refractory to most reagents used for transient transfections. Alternative transient approaches, such as electroporation or transduction with lentiviral vectors, typically cause cell death (electroporation) or can be time-consuming to generate numerous lentivirus when using different genes of interest. Therefore, we use the Sleeping Beauty system to generate stably transfected cells. The system uses a “resurrected” transposase gene named Sleeping Beauty found in salmonid fish. Experimentally, the system introduces two plasmids: one carrying the Sleeping Beauty transposase and the other with an integration cassette carrying the gene of interest, a reverse-doxycycline controlled repressor gene, and an antibiotic resistance gene. The construct used in this protocol provides puromycin resistance. Stable integrations are selected by culturing the cells in the presence of puromycin, and further enrichment can be obtained using fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS). In this protocol, we use the Sleeping Beauty transposon system to generate RAW264.7 cells with doxycycline-inducible inositol polyphosphate 4-phosphatase B containing a C-terminal CaaX motif (INPP4B-CaaX). INPP4B-CaaX dephosphorylates the D-4 position of phosphatidylinositol 3,4-bisphosphate and inhibits phagocytosis. One benefit is that generating stable cell lines is substantially faster than selecting for random integrations. Without FACS, the method typically gives ~50% of the cells that are transfected; with sorting, this approaches 100%. This makes phagocytosis experiments easier since more cells can be analyzed per experiment, allowing for population-based measurements where a ~10% transient transfection rate is insufficient. Finally, using the doxycycline-promoter allows for low near endogenous expression of proteins or robust overexpression.

Due to overlapping sequences with linear cognates, identifying internal sequences of circular RNA (circRNA) remains a challenge. Recently, we have developed a full-length circRNA sequencing method (circFL-seq) and computational pipeline, to profile ordinary and fusion circRNA at the isoform level. Compared to short-read RNA-seq, rolling circular reverse transcription and nanopore long-read sequencing of circFL-seq make circRNA reads more than tenfold enriched, and show advantages for identification of both short (<100 nt) and long (>2,000 nt) circRNA transcripts. circFL-seq allows identification of differential alternative splicing suggested wide application prospects for functional studies of internal sequences in circRNAs. In addition, the experimental protocol and computational pipeline of circFL-seq shows better sensitivity and precision for identification of back-splicing junctions than current long-read sequencing methods. Together, the accurate identification and quantification of full-length circRNAs makes circFL-seq a potential tool for large-scale screening of functional circRNAs.

In this protocol, we describe our methods to isolate crypts from patients' biopsy samples and to culture human intestinal stem cells as it’s called “organoid.” Beyond that, we describe how to dissociate organoids cells into single cells for single-cell analysis as a further application. This protocol should provide investigators sufficient tools to generate human organoids from biopsy samples and to accomplish a stable in-vitro assay system.

Ex vivo culture assays of biopsy specimens are advantageous for the experimental evaluation of human circadian characteristics. We developed a simple and non-invasive experimental evaluation method for monitoring the expression of circadian clock genes in an ex vivo culture assay using human hair follicles. This method imposes little burden on subjects. This assay is useful for validating correlations between circadian characteristics in hair follicles and intrinsic characteristics observed in physiological and behavioral studies. While they should be further validated, this ex vivo method constitutes a useful tool for estimating in vivo circadian characteristics.

Cell heterogeneity is high in tissues like lung. Research conducted on pure population of cells usually offers more insights than bulk tissues, such as circadian clock work. In this protocol, we provide a detailed work flow on how to do circadian clock study by RNA seq in laser capture micro-dissected mouse lung club cells. The method uses frozen tissues and is highly reproduciable.

The ability to rapidly assemble and prototype cellular circuits is vital for biological research and its applications in biotechnology and medicine. The Mammalian ToolKit (MTK) is a Golden Gate-based cloning toolkit for fast, reproducible and versatile assembly of large DNA vectors and their implementation in mammalian models. The MTK consists of a curated library of characterized, modular parts that can be assembled into transcriptional units and further weaved into complex circuits. These circuits are easily repurposed and introduced in mammalian cells by different methods.

Cancer cell lines serve as invaluable model systems for cancer biology research and help in evaluating the efficacy of new therapeutic agents. However, cell line contamination and misidentification have become one of the most pressing problems affecting biomedical research. Available methods of cell line authentication suffer from limited access, time-consuming and often costly for many researchers, hence a new and cost-effective approach for cell line authentication is needed. In this regard, we developed a new method called CeL-ID for cell line authentication using genomic variants as a byproduct derived from RNA-seq data. CeL-ID was trained and tested on publicly available more than 900 RNA-seq dataset derived from the Cancer Cell Line Encyclopedia (CCLE) project; including most frequently used adult and pediatric cancer cell lines. We generated cell line specific variant profiles from RNA-seq data using our in-house pipeline followed by pair-wise variant profile comparison between cell lines using allele frequencies and depth of coverage values of the entire variant set. Comparative analysis of variant profiles revealed that they differ significantly from cell line to cell line whereas identical, synonymous and derivative cell lines share high variant identity and their allelic fractions are highly correlated, which is the basis of this cell line authentication protocol. Additionally, CeL-ID also includes a method to estimate the possible cross-contamination using a linear mixture model with any possible CCLE cells in case no perfect match was detected.

This protocol details a method to analyze two tissue samples at the transcriptomic level using microarray analysis, ingenuity pathway analysis (IPA) and gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA). Methods such as these provide insight into the mechanisms underlying biological differences across two samples and thus can be applied to interrogate a variety of processes across different tissue samples, conditions, and the like. The full method detailed below can be applied to determine the effects of muscle-specific Notch1 activation in the mdx mouse model and to analyze previously published microarray data of human liposarcoma cell lines.