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Saez Rodriguez, J.

Publications and source records attributed to Saez Rodriguez, J..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

A cross-species multimodal database of gene expression in cardiac hypertrophy

Changes in gene expression determine the pathophysiological response of the heart during increased workload and biomechanical stress.1,2 Understanding the complex gene expression regulation during physiological and pathological stress provides insight into mechanisms that mediate the transition from cardiac hypertrophy to heart failure. We curated and generated a multi-omics database of cardiac hypertrophy and heart failure and exemplified its usage by evaluating the regulation of UCK2, a gene that belongs to a conserved cardiomyocyte hypertrophy gene expression signature with unknown function in heart disease. To provide the community with simple access to the database, we developed CHEERIO (Cardiac HypErtrophy gEne expRessIOn Database), a free and easy-to-use interactive web application to explore rodent and human gene expression during early, late, physiological and pathological cardiac hypertrophy, as well as heart failure at transcriptome, translatome, proteome, bulk and single-cell resolution. CHEERIO is freely available at https://voelkerslab.shinyapps.io/CHEERIO/.

physiology↗

Spatial multi-omic map of human myocardial infarction

Myocardial infarction is a leading cause of mortality. While advances in the acute treatment have been made, the late-stage mortality is still high, driven by an incomplete understanding of cardiac remodeling processes1,2. Here we used single-cell gene expression, chromatin accessibility and spatial transcriptomic profiling of different physiological zones and timepoints of human myocardial infarction and human control myocardium to generate an integrative high-resolution map of cardiac remodeling. This approach allowed us to increase spatial resolution of cell-type composition and provide spatially resolved insights into the cardiac transcriptome and epigenome with identification of distinct cellular zones of injury, repair and remodeling. We here identified and validated mechanisms of fibroblast to myofibroblast differentiation that drive cardiac fibrosis. Our study provides an integrative molecular map of human myocardial infarction and represents a reference to advance mechanistic and therapeutic studies of cardiac disease.

systems biology↗

Reusability and composability in process description maps: RAS-RAF-MEK-ERK signalling

Detailed maps of the molecular basis of the disease are powerful tools for interpreting data and building predictive models. Modularity and composability are considered necessary network features for large-scale collaborative efforts to build comprehensive molecular descriptions of disease mechanisms. An effective way to create and manage large systems is to compose multiple subsystems. Composable network components could effectively harness the contributions of many individuals and enable teams to seamlessly assemble many individual components into comprehensive maps. We examine manually-built versions of the RAS-RAF-MEK-ERK cascade from the Atlas of Cancer Signalling Network, PANTHER and Reactome databases and review them in terms of their reusability and composability for assembling new disease models. We identify design principles for managing complex systems that could make it easier for investigators to share and reuse network components. We demonstrate the main challenges including incompatible levels of detail and ambiguous representation of complexes and highlight the need to address these challenges.

systems biology↗