title: Age, Sexual Dimorphism, and Disease Associations in the Developing Human Fetal Lung Transcriptome.
abstract: The fetal origins of disease hypothesis suggests that variations in the course of prenatal lung development may affect life-long pulmonary function growth, decline, and pathobiology. Many studies support the existence of differences in the developing lung trajectory in males and females, and sex-specific differences in the prevalence of chronic lung diseases, such as asthma and bronchopulmonary dysplasia. The objectives of this study were to investigate the early developing fetal lung for transcriptomic correlates of postconception age (maturity) and sex, and their associations with chronic lung diseases. We analyzed whole-lung transcriptome profiles of 61 females and 78 males at 54-127 days postconception (dpc) from nonsmoking mothers using unsupervised principal component analysis and supervised linear regression models. We identified dominant transcriptomic correlates for postconception age and sex with corresponding gene sets that were enriched for developing lung structural and functional ontologies. We observed that the transcriptomic sex difference was not a uniform global time shift/lag, rather, lungs of males appear to be more mature than those of females before 96 dpc, and females appear to be more mature than males after 96 dpc. The age correlate gene set was consistently enriched for asthma and bronchopulmonary dysplasia genes, but the sex correlate gene sets were not. Despite sex differences in the developing fetal lung transcriptome, postconception age appears to be more dominant than sex in the effect of early fetal lung developments on disease risk during this early pseudoglandular phase of development.
authors.affiliation: 1 Children's Hospital Informatics Program, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts.|2 Channing Division of Network Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts.|3 Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts; and.
authors.forename: Alvin T
authors.initials: AT
authors.lastname: Kho
authors.affiliation: 2 Channing Division of Network Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts.|3 Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts; and.
authors.forename: Divya
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Chhabra
authors.affiliation: 2 Channing Division of Network Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts.|3 Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts; and.|4 Division of Pulmonary Sciences and Critical Care Medicine, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Aurora, Colorado.
authors.forename: Sunita
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sharma
authors.affiliation: 2 Channing Division of Network Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts.|3 Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts; and.
authors.forename: Weiliang
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Qiu
authors.affiliation: 2 Channing Division of Network Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts.|3 Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts; and.
authors.forename: Vincent J
authors.initials: VJ
authors.lastname: Carey
authors.affiliation: 5 Division of Pediatric Clinical Pharmacology and Medical Toxicology, Children's Mercy Hospital and Clinics, Kansas City, Missouri; and.
authors.forename: Roger
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Gaedigk
authors.affiliation: 5 Division of Pediatric Clinical Pharmacology and Medical Toxicology, Children's Mercy Hospital and Clinics, Kansas City, Missouri; and.
authors.forename: Carrie A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Vyhlidal
authors.affiliation: 5 Division of Pediatric Clinical Pharmacology and Medical Toxicology, Children's Mercy Hospital and Clinics, Kansas City, Missouri; and.
authors.forename: J Steven
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Leeder
authors.affiliation: 2 Channing Division of Network Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts.|3 Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts; and.
authors.forename: Kelan G
authors.initials: KG
authors.lastname: Tantisira
authors.affiliation: 2 Channing Division of Network Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts.|3 Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts; and.
authors.forename: Scott T
authors.initials: ST
authors.lastname: Weiss
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D030541:Databases, Genetic; D005260:Female; D005333:Fetus / Q000378:metabolism*; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D018507:Gene Expression Regulation, Developmental; D006801:Humans; D008168:Lung / Q000196:embryology* / Q000473:pathology*; D008171:Lung Diseases / Q000235:genetics*; D008297:Male; D025341:Principal Component Analysis; D012727:Sex Characteristics; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D059467:Transcriptome / Q000235:genetics*
keywords: asthma; bronchopulmonary dyplasia; embryonic and fetal development; lung; sex dimorphism