Transcriptome and proteome profiling of neural stem cells from the human subventricular zone in Parkinson's disease

It is currently accepted that the human brain has a limited neurogenic capacity and an impaired regenerative potential. We have previously shown the existence of CD271-expressing neural stem cells (NSCs) in the subventricular zone (SVZ) of Parkinson's disease (PD) patients, which proliferate and differentiate towards neurons and glial cells in vitro. To study the molecular profile of these NSCs in detail, we performed RNA sequencing and mass spectrometry on CD271+ NSCs isolated from human post-mortem SVZ and on homogenates of the SVZ. CD271+ cells were isolated through magnetic cell separation (MACS). We first compared the molecular profile of CD271+ NSCs to the SVZ homogenate from control donors to assess the CD271+ NSCs gene signature and finally made a comparison between controls and PD patients to establish a specific molecular profile of NSCs and the SVZ in PD. While our transcriptome analysis did not identify any differentially expressed genes in the SVZ between control and PD patients, our proteome analysis revealed several proteins that were differentially expressed in PD. Some of these proteins are involved in cytoskeletal organization and mitochondrial function. Transcriptome and proteome analyses of NSCs from PD revealed changes in the expression of genes and proteins involved in metabolism, transcriptional activity and cytoskeletal organization. Our results not only confirm pathological hallmarks of PD (e.g. impaired mitochondrial function), but also suggest that NSCs may transit into a primed-quiescent state, that is in an “alert” non-proliferative phase in PD. Overall design: From post-mortem human SVZ of control and Parkinson disease donors we isolated CD271+ NSCs and Cd11b+ microglia by MACS and the whole SVZ to generate RNA sequencing libraries using Celseq2 method. We aimed for low coverage sequencing (~2 million mapped to the coding regions) per sample to investigate the gross changes in the transcriptome. Libraries (rpi small primer) were sequenced in 3 runs, 2 on an Illumina NextSeq500 using 75-bp paired-end sequencing at the Utrecht Seuqencing center (USEQ) and the third on a HiSeq4000 using 150-bp paired-end sequencing at Genomescan. All the samples were mapped in a single run to an average depth of ~10 million reads per sample. Reads were mapped to the latest human coding transcriptome using bwa, normalized and analyzed using the standard DESEQ2 package.

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Donega V, Burm SM, van Strien ME, van Bodegraven EJ, Paliukhovich I, Geut H, van de Berg WDJ, Li KW, Smit AB, Basak O, Hol EM