Research Paper Volume 13, Issue 8 pp 11646—11664
Two reactive behaviors of chondrocytes in an IL-1β-induced inflammatory environment revealed by the single-cell RNA sequencing
- 1 Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430030, Hubei, China
- 2 Department of Physiology, School of Basic Medicine, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430030, Hubei, China
- 3 Center for Genomics and Proteomics Research, School of Basic Medicine, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430030, Hubei, China
- 4 Hubei Key Laboratory of Drug Target Research and Pharmacodynamic Evaluation, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430030, China
Received: August 18, 2020 Accepted: December 9, 2020 Published: April 20, 2021
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.202857How to Cite
Copyright: © 2021 Gao et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Objective: To investigate the heterogeneous responses of in vitro expanded chondrocytes, which were cultured in an interleukin (IL)-1β -induced inflammatory environment.
Method: Human articular chondrocytes were expanded, in vitro, for 13 days and treated with IL-1β for 0, 24, and 48 h. Cells were collected and subjected to single-cell RNA sequencing. Multiple bioinformatics tools were used to determine the signatures that define chondrocyte physiology.
Results: Two major cell clusters with distinct expression patterns were identified at the initial phase and were with heterogeneous variation that coincides with inflammation progress. They transformed into two terminal cell clusters one of which exhibited OA-phenotype and proinflammatory characteristics through two paths, “response-to-inflammation” and “atypical response-to-inflammation”, respectively. The involved cell clusters exhibited intrinsic relationship with cell types within native cartilage from OA patients. Genes controlling cell transformation to OA-phenotype were relating to the tumor necrosis factor (TNF) signaling pathway via NFKB, up-regulated KRAS signaling and the IL2/STAT5 signaling pathway and pathways relating to apoptosis and reactive oxygen species.
Conclusion: The in vitro expanded chondrocytes under IL-1β-induced inflammatory progression behave heterogeneously. One of the initial cell clusters could transform into a proinflammatory subpopulation through a termed response-to-inflammation path, which may serve as the core target to alleviate OA progression.