title: Comparative analysis of human and mouse transcriptomes of Th17 cell priming.
abstract: Uncontrolled Th17 cell activity is associated with cancer and autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. To validate the potential relevance of mouse models of targeting the Th17 pathway in human diseases we used RNA sequencing to compare the expression of coding and non-coding transcripts during the priming of Th17 cell differentiation in both human and mouse. In addition to already known targets, several transcripts not previously linked to Th17 cell polarization were found in both species. Moreover, a considerable number of human-specific long non-coding RNAs were identified that responded to cytokines stimulating Th17 cell differentiation. We integrated our transcriptomics data with known disease-associated polymorphisms and show that conserved regulation pinpoints genes that are relevant to Th17 cell-mediated human diseases and that can be modelled in mouse. Substantial differences observed in non-coding transcriptomes between the two species as well as increased overlap between Th17 cell-specific gene expression and disease-associated polymorphisms underline the need of parallel analysis of human and mouse models. Comprehensive analysis of genes regulated during Th17 cell priming and their classification to conserved and non-conserved between human and mouse facilitates translational research, pointing out which candidate targets identified in human are worth studying by using in vivo mouse models.
authors.affiliation: Turku Centre for Biotechnology, University of Turku and Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland.
authors.forename: Soile
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Tuomela
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science, Aalto University, Espoo, Finland.
authors.forename: Sini
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Rautio
authors.affiliation: Division of Molecular Immunology, MRC National Institute for Medical Research, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Helena
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Ahlfors
authors.affiliation: Turku Centre for Biotechnology, University of Turku and Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland.
authors.forename: Viveka
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Öling
authors.affiliation: Turku Centre for Biotechnology, University of Turku and Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland.
authors.forename: Verna
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Salo
authors.affiliation: Turku Centre for Biotechnology, University of Turku and Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland.
authors.forename: Ubaid
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Ullah
authors.affiliation: Turku Centre for Biotechnology, University of Turku and Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland.
authors.forename: Zhi
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Turku Centre for Biotechnology, University of Turku and Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland.
authors.forename: Saara
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hämälistö
authors.affiliation: Turku Centre for Biotechnology, University of Turku and Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland.
authors.forename: Subhash K
authors.initials: SK
authors.lastname: Tripathi
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science, Aalto University, Espoo, Finland.
authors.forename: Tarmo
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Äijö
authors.affiliation: Turku Centre for Biotechnology, University of Turku and Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland.
authors.forename: Omid
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Rasool
authors.affiliation: Computational Cancer Biology, Division of Molecular Carcinogenesis, Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Hayssam
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Soueidan
authors.affiliation: Computational Cancer Biology, Division of Molecular Carcinogenesis, Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Lodewyk
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Wessels
authors.affiliation: Division of Molecular Immunology, MRC National Institute for Medical Research, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Brigitta
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Stockinger
authors.affiliation: Turku Centre for Biotechnology, University of Turku and Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland.|Department of Computer Science, Aalto University, Espoo, Finland.
authors.forename: Harri
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Lähdesmäki
authors.affiliation: Turku Centre for Biotechnology, University of Turku and Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland.
authors.forename: Riitta
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Lahesmaa
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D015415:Biomarkers / Q000378:metabolism*; D002478:Cells, Cultured; D006801:Humans; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D051379:Mice; D008810:Mice, Inbred C57BL; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; D017423:Sequence Analysis, RNA; D058504:Th17 Cells / Q000276:immunology* / Q000378:metabolism*; D059467:Transcriptome
chemical_list: D015415:Biomarkers
keywords: Immune response; Immunity; Immunology and Microbiology Section; RNA-seq; Th17 cell priming; comparative analysis of human and mouse; disease-associated SNPs; lncRNA