An In Vitro System to Study the Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition In Vitro

Uncovering Novel Features of the Pc Locus in Horn Development from Gene-Edited Holstein Cattle by RNA-Sequencing Analysis

The Polled Celtic (Pc) mutation locus is a genetically simple single mutation that is the best choice for breeding polled cattle using gene editing. However, the mechanism of the Pc locus for regulating horn development is unclear, so we used gene editing, somatic cell nuclear transfer and embryo transfer to obtain polled Holstein fetal bovine (gestation time 90 days) with a homozygous Pc insertion (gene-edited Holstein fetal bovine, EH) and the wild-type 90 days Holstein fetal bovine (WH) as controls. The hematoxylin-eosin (HE) staining results showed that, compared to the WH, the EH horn buds had no white keratinized projections or vacuolated keratinocytes and no thick nerve bundles under the dermal tissue. Furthermore, DNA sequencing results showed that the Pc locus was homozygously inserted into the fetal bovine genome. A total of 791 differentially expressed genes were identified by transcriptome sequencing analysis. Enrichment analysis and protein interaction analysis results of differentially expressed genes showed that abundant gene changes after Pc insertion were associated with the adhesion molecule regulation, actin expression, cytoskeletal deformation and keratin expression and keratinization. It was also noted that the results contained several genes that had been reported to be associated with the development of horn traits, such as RXFP2 and TWIST1. This study identified these changes for the first time and summarized them. The results suggested that the Pc mutant locus may inhibit neural crest cell EMT generation and keratin expression, leading to failures in neural crest cell migration and keratinization of the horn bud tissue, regulating the production of the polled phenotype.

Emodin-induced autophagic cell death hinders epithelial-mesenchymal transition via regulation of BMP-7/TGF-β1 in renal fibrosis

We aim to explore the effects of emodin and its mechanisms on renal fibrosis (RF). We firstly modeled adriamycin-induced rat RF with unilateral nephrectomy. In vivo and in vitro pharmacological experiments were performed in this study. The presence of collagen deposition was detected by Masson staining. To verify whether emodin attenuates RF by monitoring autophagy, the immunohistochemistry staining for autophagy protein LC3B was performed. We conducted western blot to detect the expression of the autophagy-related proteins in EMT in vitro model after treating with emotin and BMP-7. In vivo, we demonstrated that emodin could improve renal dysfunction and decrease pathological damage of the kidney by activation of autophagy and inhibition of EMT. Upregulation of BMP-7 was recorded in the RF rats subjected to emodin treatment. In vitro studies, emodin has the capacity of reversing EMT and activating autophagy, and emodin could regulate the expression of BMP-7. The results revealed that the attenuation of EMT by emodin could be blocked after the inhibition of BMP-7 and suppression of autophagy. Our findings demonstrated that emodin alleviates EMT during RF by actuating autophagy through BMP-7, suggesting a role of BMP-7 in RF treatment and prevention.