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Transcriptional profiling of human corneal epithelium using laser capture microdissection and massive parallel sequencing
Author(s) -
BATH C,
MUTTUVELU D,
EMMERSEN J,
VORUM H,
HJORTDAL J,
ZACHAR V
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
acta ophthalmologica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.534
H-Index - 87
eISSN - 1755-3768
pISSN - 1755-375X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1755-3768.2013.2434.x
Subject(s) - laser capture microdissection , biology , microdissection , transcriptome , gene expression profiling , cornea , corneal epithelium , stroma , kegg , gene , epithelium , gene expression , computational biology , microbiology and biotechnology , genetics , immunology , immunohistochemistry , neuroscience
This study was conducted to perform global transcriptomic profiling and biomarker discovery on undisturbed human corneal epithelial subpopulations using a novel approach combining laser capture microdissection (LCM) and RNA sequencing. LCM facilitated the harvest of four cellular compartments along the corneal epithelial differentiation pathway: Stroma, basal limbal crypt (BLC), superficial limbal crypt (SLC), and cornea. Compartments were analyzed using massive parallel sequencing and bioinformatics. Specificity of LCM was confirmed by imaging, expression of epithelial markers, and gene ontology analysis of biological processes. Interestingly, many significant upregulated genes in SLC mapped to processes involved in regulation of vasculature like sFLT1. In contrast, BLC had many upregulated genes mapping to neurogenic and developmental processes. The primitive nature of BLC was confirmed by KEGG pathway analysis. We present full gene lists of unique expressed genes in both BLC and cornea representing candidate biomarkers. Possible novel regulators of limbal epithelial stem cells (LESCs) include Lrig1 and SOX9. The presented molecular insight in LESC biology is expected to be beneficial for both research and clinical translation.