Predicting proximal tubule failed repair drivers through regularized regression analysis of single cell multiomic sequencing

N Ledru, PC Wilson, Y Muto, Y Yoshimura, H Wu… - Nature …, 2024 - nature.com
N Ledru, PC Wilson, Y Muto, Y Yoshimura, H Wu, D Li, A Asthana, SG Tullius, SS Waikar…
Nature communications, 2024nature.com
Renal proximal tubule epithelial cells have considerable intrinsic repair capacity following
injury. However, a fraction of injured proximal tubule cells fails to undergo normal repair and
assumes a proinflammatory and profibrotic phenotype that may promote fibrosis and chronic
kidney disease. The healthy to failed repair change is marked by cell state-specific
transcriptomic and epigenomic changes. Single nucleus joint RNA-and ATAC-seq
sequencing offers an opportunity to study the gene regulatory networks underpinning these …
Abstract
Renal proximal tubule epithelial cells have considerable intrinsic repair capacity following injury. However, a fraction of injured proximal tubule cells fails to undergo normal repair and assumes a proinflammatory and profibrotic phenotype that may promote fibrosis and chronic kidney disease. The healthy to failed repair change is marked by cell state-specific transcriptomic and epigenomic changes. Single nucleus joint RNA- and ATAC-seq sequencing offers an opportunity to study the gene regulatory networks underpinning these changes in order to identify key regulatory drivers. We develop a regularized regression approach to construct genome-wide parametric gene regulatory networks using multiomic datasets. We generate a single nucleus multiomic dataset from seven adult human kidney samples and apply our method to study drivers of a failed injury response associated with kidney disease. We demonstrate that our approach is a highly effective tool for predicting key cis- and trans-regulatory elements underpinning the healthy to failed repair transition and use it to identify NFAT5 as a driver of the maladaptive proximal tubule state.
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