Identification of differential gene expression in endothelial cells from young and aged mice using RNA-Seq technique

Liang Zhang; Manli Liu; Qing Li; Bing Shen; Chaojie Hu; Rui Fu; Mengdie Liu; Jie Deng; Qi Cao; Yiping Wang; Yuanmin Wang

Identification of differential gene expression in endothelial cells from young and aged mice using RNA-Seq technique

Am J Transl Res. 2019 Oct 15;11(10):6553-6560. eCollection 2019.

Authors

Liang Zhang¹, Manli Liu¹, Qing Li^{1

2}, Bing Shen³, Chaojie Hu^{1

2}, Rui Fu¹, Mengdie Liu¹, Jie Deng¹, Qi Cao⁴, Yiping Wang⁴, Yuanmin Wang⁵

Affiliations

¹ The Central Laboratory of Medical Research Center, Anhui Provincial Hospital, Anhui Medical University Hefei 230001, Anhui, PR China.
² The Central Laboratory of Medical Research Center, The First Affiliated Hospital of USTC, Division of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Science and Technology of China Hefei 230001, Anhui, PR China.
³ School of Basic Medical Sciences, Anhui Medical University Hefei 230032, Anhui, PR China.
⁴ The Centre for Transplantation and Renal Research, Westmead Institute for Medical Research, University of Sydney Sydney, NSW, Australia.
⁵ Centre for Kidney Research, Children's Hospital at Westmead Sydney, NSW, Australia.

PMID: 31737206
PMCID: PMC6834518

Abstract

Aging is a complex phenomenon. Endothelial cell senescence is regarded as a vital characteristic of cardiovascular diseases. This study aims to identify differentially expressed genes in vascular endothelial cells (ECs) of different age groups by RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) technique, and to explore which molecular pathways differentially expressed genes (DEGs) may enrich in. In this study, we used RNA-Seq to analyze DEGs in primary endothelial cells of young and old mice, and further analyzed them by gene ontology (GO) enrichment and the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathways. Our results showed that in total identified 229 of the DEGs, 104 were upregulated and 125 were downregulated in endothelial cells of aged mice compared with young mice. Gene ontology (GO) enrichment and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway analysis showed that the involvement of these DEGs in the regulation of morphogenesis of a branching structure, angiogenesis, upregulation of cell proliferation, and extracellular matrix (ECM)-receptor interaction. These results provided a novel insight to understand the molecular mechanisms underlying aortic endothelial cell senescence, and some of the novel candidate genes identified in this study may be valuable in elucidating the molecular mechanisms underlying endothelial cell senescence.

Keywords: Endothelial cells; RNA-seq; gene expression; senescence.