Version Changes
Revised. Amendments from Version 1
In response to the reviewers we added background information at the beginning of the introduction section to present the rationale behind the data mining approach that was employed as well as the purpose of diagrams that were integrated to the figures. These in essence constitute “graphical legends” and allow presentation of the data in a semi-structured format, thus diagrams were moved accordingly below the plots in each figure. We also re-plotted the result of figure 1, retaining only neutrophil and monocyte data plot as per the reviewers’ suggestions. Additional data have been plotted as requested by the reviewers. We have also analyzed association of abundance of ADAM9 with degree of severity in trauma patients (GSE11375: Figure 5) and viral infections (GSE34205/GSE38900; Conclusions); and also added datasets generated in experimental models of injury in vitro and in vivo in human and mice (Supplementary figure 6) to further document the involvement of ADAM9 in tissue inflammation/injury. Finally we have also updated the title of this article.
Abstract
Background: Members of the ADAM (a disintegrin and metalloprotease domain) family have emerged as critical regulators of cell-cell signaling during development and homeostasis. ADAM9 is consistently overexpressed in various human cancers, and has been shown to play an important role in tumorigenesis. However, little is known about the involvement of ADAM9 during immune-mediated processes.
Results: Mining of an extensive compendium of transcriptomic datasets identified important gaps in knowledge regarding the possible role of ADAM9 in immunological homeostasis and inflammation: 1) The abundance of ADAM9 transcripts in the blood was increased in patients with acute infection but, 2) changed very little after in vitro exposure to a wide range of pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs). 3) Furthermore it was found to increase significantly in subjects as a result of tissue injury or tissue remodeling, in absence of infectious processes.
Conclusions: Our findings indicate that ADAM9 may constitute a valuable biomarker for the assessment of tissue damage, especially in clinical situations where other inflammatory markers are confounded by infectious processes.
Keywords: ADAM9, Data mining, Transcriptomics, RNAseq, Microarray
Introduction
Over the recent years “deep” molecular phenotyping technologies have become widely available to biomedical researchers. As a consequence collections of large-scale datasets held in public repositories are rapidly expending. For instance, GEO, the NCBI Gene Expression Omnibus, is comprised of over 70,000 transcriptome data series, representing over 1.8 million individual profiles 1. Altogether publically available molecular and cellular phenotyping data of all types constitute the biomedical research community’s “collective data”. Collective data can and should be exploited not only by researchers who have acquired valuable background in quantitative sciences, but also by “mainstream” life scientists, whose research can also greatly benefit from this vast resource. A unique global perspective can for instance simply be gained from examining the abundance of a single analyte across tens or hundreds of “omics” studies. In this report potential gaps in knowledge pertaining to the role of the ADAM9 were investigated through interpretation of changes in abundance of ADAM9 RNA across public transcriptome datasets relevant to human immunology.
“ADAM metallopeptidase 9 (ADAM9) is a member of the ADAM (a disintegrin and metalloprotease domain) family. Members of this family are membrane-anchored proteins structurally related to snake venom disintegrins, and have been implicated in a variety of biological processes involving cell-cell and cell-matrix interactions, including fertilization, muscle development, and neurogenesis. The protein encoded by this gene interacts with SH3 domain-containing proteins, binds mitotic arrest deficient 2 beta protein, and is also involved in TPA-induced ectodomain shedding of membrane-anchored heparin-binding EGF-like growth factor. Several alternatively spliced transcript variants have been identified for this gene.” (Quoted from RefSeq 2).
ADAM9 top functions include cellular adhesion, protein cleavage and shedding. ( Supplementary Figure 1). Human ADAM9 protein cleaves and releases collagen XVII from the surface of skin keratinocytes 3. This activity is enhanced in the presence of reactive oxygen species. Mouse ADAM9 protein cleaves and releases epidermal growth factor (EGF) and fibroblast growth factor receptor 2IIIb (FGFR2IIIb) from the surface of prostate epithelial cells 4. Following LPS treatment, ADAM9 protein catalytic domain cleaves Angiotensin-I converting enzyme (ACE) from the surface of endothelial cells 5. Human ADAM9 protein disintegrin-cysteine-rich domain binds integrins and thus mediates cell adhesion 6. Human ADAM9 protein enhances adhesion and invasion of non-small lung tumors which mediates tumor metastasis 7. Mouse ADAM9 protein enhances tissue plasminogen activator (TPA)-mediated cleavage of CUB domain-containing protein 1 (CDCP1) 8. This activity mediates lung tumor metastasis. Human ADAM9 protein mediates cell-cell contact interaction between stromal fibroblasts and melanoma cells at the tumor-stroma border, thus contributing to proteolytic activities required during invasion of melanoma cells 9.
ADAM9 expression and regulation. ADAM9 has been reported as being expressed in various cell populations including monocytes 10, activated macrophages 11, epithelial cells, activated vascular smooth muscle cells, fibroblasts 9, keratinocytes and tumor cells. The abundance of ADAM9 RNA measured by RT-PCR is decreased in vitro in human melanoma cells after culture with collagen type I or with Interleukin 1 alpha (IL1α) compared to mock stimulated conditions 12.
ADAM9 has been involved in disease processes including cancer, cone rod dystrophy and atherosclerosis. Homozygous mutation of the human ADAM9 gene results in severe cone rod dystrophy and cataract 13. Mutation of the mouse ADAM9 gene results in no major abnormalities during development and adult life 14. The abundance of ADAM9 RNA and protein measured by immunostaining and RT-PCR is increased in vivo in human prostate tumors compared to normal tissue 15. The abundance of ADAM9 RNA measured by microarray and RT-PCR is increased in vivo in human advanced atherosclerotic plaque macrophages compared to normal tissue 16. This increase is predictive of Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) relapse.
It is known that ADAM9 is upregulated in some tumor cells during pathologic processes and also contributes to the formation of multinucleate giant cells from monocytes and macrophages 11. However, little is known about the activities of ADAM9 in regulating physiologic or pathologic processes, especially during acute infection or in response to tissue damage.
Methods
ADAM9 bibliography screening and literature profiling
Existing knowledge pertaining to ADAM9 was retrieved using NCBI’s National Library of Medicine’s Pubmed search engine with a query that included official gene symbol and name as well as aliases: “ADAM9 OR ADAM-9 OR "ADAM metallopeptidase domain 9" OR MCMP OR MDC9 OR CORD9”. As of January of 2015, 287 papers were returned when running this query. By reviewing this literature keywords were identified that were classified under six categories corresponding to cell types, diseases, functions, tissues, molecules or processes. Frequencies of these keywords were then determined for the ADAM9 bibliography as shown in Supplementary Figure 1. This literature screen identified and prioritized existing knowledge about the gene ADAM9 and was used to prepare the background section of this manuscript and provided the necessary perspective for the interpretation of ADAM9 profiles across other large-scale datasets.
Interactive data browsing application
We employed a resource that is described in details 17 and is available publicly: https://gxb.benaroyaresearch.org/dm3/landing.gsp. Briefly: we have assembled and curated a collection of 172 datasets that are relevant to human immunology, representing a total of 12,886 unique transcriptome profiles. These sets were selected among studies currently available in NCBI’s Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/).
The custom software interface provides the user with a means to easily navigate and filter the compendium of available datasets ( https://gxb.benaroyaresearch.org/dm3/geneBrowser/list) 17, 18. Datasets of interest can be quickly identified either by filtering on criteria from pre-defined lists on the left or by entering a query term in the search box at the top of the dataset navigation page, we also provided the GXB tutorial in YouTube video; https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtx3tvfIzJ9XkRKUz6ISEJpAhqKyuiCiD.
Graphical legends
Diagrams have been incorporated within each figure. These have a dual purpose, first they provide readers with a graphical summary of the findings and second constitute an attempt a structuring information for future computational applications. Indeed, an important limitation of communicating biomedical knowledge in the form of research articles is that it consists in unstructured information (free text). This type of information is notoriously difficult to extract by computational means 19. Standardized graphical summaries such as the ones provided in this manuscript constitute structured information that is both human readable and computationally tractable. The need for solutions will become more pressing as the biomedical literature continues to grow exponentially to such scales that it can only be very narrowly apprehended by research investigators. The graphical legends presented here merely serve as proof of concept.
Statistical analyses
All statistical analyses were performed using GraphPad Prism software version 6 (GraphPad Software, San Diego, CA).
Results and discussion
Knowledge gap assessment
The seminal discovery was made while examining RNAseq transcriptional profiles. A knowledge gap was exposed when those results were interpreted in light of existing knowledge reported in the literature. Next, the initial observation was validated and further extended by examining profiles of the gene of interest, ADAM9, across a large number of independent publically available transcriptome datasets. The completion of these tasks was aided by a custom data browsing application loaded with a curated compendium of 172 datasets relevant to human immunology sourced from the National Center for Biotechnology Information’s (NCBI) Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) ( https://gxb.benaroyaresearch.org/dm3/landing.gsp) 17. Briefly, ADAM9 transcript was identified as a potential early stage discovery while browsing RNA-sequencing profiles of blood leukocyte populations ( https://gxb.benaroyaresearch.org/dm3/geneBrowser/show/396), with the genes being ranked in alphabetical order. In this particular dataset whole blood sample of healthy donors, patients during acute infections (meningococcal sepsis, E. coli sepsis, C. difficile colitis), multiple sclerosis patients pre- and post- interferon treatment, patients with Type 1 diabetes and patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) were obtained and monocyte, neutrophil, CD4 T cell, CD8 T cells, B cell, NK Cell isolated prior to profiling via RNA sequencing 20. The abundance of ADAM9 RNA measured by RNA-seq in human blood neutrophils and monocyte samples from subjects with sepsis was found to be markedly increased as compared to uninfected controls ( Figure 1; [ iFigure/ GSE60424] 20). By comparison levels of abundance of ADAM9 RNA in lymphocytes and Natural Killer (NK) cells were low and no changes were observed in subjects with sepsis in these cell populations. Despite the small number of septic subjects included in the study (N=3) the robust increase in abundance that was observed prompted attempts to validate and further extend this initial observation in independent public datasets that were part of the compendium.
The abundance of ADAM9 increases during infection
Our data browsing tool allows the assessment of expression profiles across transcriptome datasets ( https://gxb.benaroyaresearch.org/dm3/geneBrowser/list). In order to validate and extend our original observation we looked up ADAM9 transcriptome profiles for all available 172 datasets ( https://gxb.benaroyaresearch.org/dm3/geneBrowser/crossProject?probeID=ENSG00000168615&geneSymbol=ADAM9&geneID=8754studies).
The abundance of ADAM9 RNA measured by microarrays in human blood samples was significantly increased as compared to uninfected controls in subjects with sepsis [ iFigure/ GSE28750] 21 & [ iFigure/ GSE29536] 22, in subjects with bacterial and influenza pneumonia [ iFigure/ GSE34205] 23, [ iFigure/ GSE40012] 24, in subjects with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection [ iFigure/ GSE34205] 23 & [ iFigure/ GSE17156] 23 and in subjects with tuberculosis [ iFigure/ GSE19439] 25 & [ iFigure/ GSE34608] 26. Aggregated findings were reported in the form of flow charts that were generated using google docs presentations, with links to the source interactive graphs systematically provided as hyperlinks ( Figure 2, Supplementary Figure 2 and Table 1). Altogether these data indicate that increase in abundance of ADAM9 can be detected in blood leukocytes, including monocytes and neutrophils fractions during bacterial and viral infection.
Table 1. Increased abundance of ADAM9 during infection.
GEO ID | A vs B | Avg A-Avg B | Avg A/Avg B | P value |
---|---|---|---|---|
GSE34205 | Influenza vs Influenza
CTRL |
129.0 | 1.7 | 0.0144 |
RSV vs RSV CTRL | 169.4 | 2.1 | 0.0009 | |
GSE19439 | Active TB vs Control | 9.1 | 1.5 | 0.0169 |
Latent TB vs Control | -0.6 | 1.0 | 0.8688 | |
GSE29536 | Sepsis 1 vs Control | 34.1 | 3.2 | < 0.0001 |
Sepsis 2 vs Control | 45.6 | 2.4 | < 0.0001 | |
GSE60424 | Sepsis vs Control
(Neutrophil) |
82.7 | 4.6 | 0.0380 |
Sepsis vs Control
(Monocyte) |
108.6 | 2.5 | 0.0121 |
Note : Avg = average abundance of ADAM9 within a given group. Statistical significance was determined using Mann-Whitney U test.
The abundance of ADAM9 increases only marginally following treatment with pathogen-associated molecules
Next, we investigated the regulation of ADAM9 transcription following leukocyte exposure to pathogens and pathogen-associated molecules. The abundance of ADAM9 RNA measured by microarrays in human blood cultures treated with Heat Killed E.coli, Heat Killed Staphylococcus aureus (HKSA) or Heat Killed Legionella pneumophillum (HKLP) for 6 hours was increased marginally as compared to unstimulated conditions [ iFigure/ GSE30101] 27. The abundance of ADAM9 RNA measured by microarrays in human blood cultures treated with Heat Killed Acholeplasma laidlawii (HKAS), E. coli LPS (E-LPS), Flagellin, PAM3, R837, Zymosan, Influenza virus, RSV, CpG, Poly:IC, for 6 hours was not changed as compared to unstimulated conditions ( Ex-vivo) [ iFigure/ GSE30101] 27; IL8 [ iFigure] and CXCL10 [ iFigure] serve as positive controls. The abundance of ADAM9 RNA measured by microarrays in human blood samples from subjects treated with poly:IC for 1 day was marginally increased as compared to baseline samples [ iFigure/ GSE32862] 28; CXCL10 [ iFigure] serves as a positive control ( Figure 3 and Supplementary Figure 3). Statistical analysis results are shown in Table 2. Taken together, these results showed that the abundance of ADAM9 was not changed or changed only marginally after stimulation with purified molecules bearing Pathogen Associated Molecular Patterns (PAMPs). These finding raised the question as to whether ADAM9 transcription might be activated instead by host-derived Damage-Associated Molecular Pattern molecule (DAMPs) 29, 30.
Table 2. Increased abundance of ADAM9 following treatment with PAMPs.
GEO ID | A vs B | Avg A-Avg B | Avg A/Avg B | P value |
---|---|---|---|---|
GSE32682 | Day 0 VS 6 H | 10.0 | 1.1 | 0.0734 |
(ADAM9) | Day 0 VS 12 H | 9.5 | 1.1 | 0.0350 |
Day 0 VS Day 1 | 7.5 | 1.1 | 0.0140 | |
Day 0 VS Day 2 | 1.1 | 1.0 | 0.9172 | |
Day 0 VS Day 3 | 3.7 | 1.0 | 0.7133 | |
Day 0 VS Day 7 | 4.3 | 1.0 | 0.6894 | |
Day 0 VS Day 14 | -1.2 | 1.0 | 0.9305 | |
Day 0 VS Day 28 | 5.3 | 1.0 | 0.1504 | |
GSE32682 | Day 0 VS 6 H | 66.9 | 1.5 | 0.4727 |
(CXCL10) | Day 0 VS 12 H | 676.3 | 6.5 | > 0.9999 |
Day 0 VS Day 1 | 924.2 | 8.5 | 0.0023 | |
Day 0 VS Day 2 | 324.0 | 3.6 | 0.0003 | |
Day 0 VS Day 3 | 5.5 | 1.0 | 0.7133 | |
Day 0 VS Day 7 | -3.8 | 1.0 | 0.8718 | |
Day 0 VS Day 14 | 67.5 | 1.5 | 0.0093 | |
Day 0 VS Day 28 | 71.0 | 1.6 | < 0.0059 |
Note : Avg = average abundance of ADAM9 within a given group. Statistical significance was determined using Mann-Whitney U test.
The abundance of ADAM9 increases during tissue remodeling
Our dataset screen revealed in addition that changes in abundance of ADAM9 could be associated with tissue remodeling. The abundance of ADAM9 RNA measured by microarrays in human skin biopsy samples of subjects with lepromatous leprosy was significantly increased as compared to controls in subjects with tuberculoid leprosy [ iFigure/ GSE17763] 31. The abundance of ADAM9 RNA measured by microarrays in human blood samples was significantly increased as compared to controls in pregnant subjects [ iFigure/ GSE17449] 32. The abundance of ADAM9 RNA measured by microarrays in human blood monocytes samples from subjects with filariasis was significantly increased as compared to uninfected controls [ iFigure/ GSE2135] 33. These results are shown in Table 3, Figure 4 and Supplementary Figure 4. A common thread between these different states is that they involve extensive tissue remodeling, whether it involves the skin (leprosy), placental tissue (pregnancy) or lymphatic tissues (filariasis).
Table 3. Increased abundance of ADAM9 during tissue remodeling.
GEO ID | A vs B | Avg A-Avg B | Avg A/Avg B | P value |
---|---|---|---|---|
GSE17763 | Lepromatous leprosy VS Tuberculoid leprosy | 13164.0 | 2.2 | 0.0012 |
GSE17449 | Non pregnancy VS Pregnancy | 51.3 | 1.4 | 0.0366 |
GSE2135 | Filariasis VS Post Treatment | 251.1 | 2.4 | 0.0313 * |
Filariasis VS Healthy Control | 283.6 | 2.9 | 0.0197 |
Note : Avg = average abundance of ADAM9 within a given group. Statistical significance were determined using Mann-Whitney U test. * (Pair samples) Statistical significance was determined using Wilcoxon test.
The abundance of ADAM9 increases following tissue injury and sterile inflammation
Changes in ADAM9 transcript abundance were observed in additional datasets: The abundance of ADAM9 RNA measured by microarrays in human blood samples was significantly increased as compared to healthy controls in subjects with sarcoidosis [ iFigure/ GSE34608] 26, in subjects after severe blunt trauma [ iFigure/ GSE11375] 34, in subjects with chronic kidney disease [ iFigure/ GSE15072] 35, and in subjects who have undergone elective thoracic or abdominal surgery [ iFigure/ GSE28750] 21. Furthermore, we found that the abundance of ADAM9 in trauma patients who did not survive (mean± 2SD; 121.3± 92.98) was significantly higher ( p <0.05) than those who survived (mean± 2SD; 90.86± 78.08) GSE11375. The abundance of ADAM9 RNA measured by microarrays in human blood samples from subjects treated with localized external beam radiation therapy for 42 days was significantly increased as compared to baseline samples [ iFigure/ GSE30174] 36. The abundance of ADAM9 RNA measured by microarrays in human blood monocytes samples from obese subjects was significantly increased as compared to lean controls [ iFigure/ GSE32575] 37. Finally, the abundance of ADAM9 RNA measured by microarrays in human blood monocytes samples from subjects after severe trauma was significantly increased as compared to healthy controls [ iFigure/ GSE5580] 38. These results showed that increase in ADAM9 transcript abundance was associated with tissue injury and sterile inflammation ( Table 4, Figure 5 and Supplementary Figure 5) and thus are consistent with the observations that are reported above associating increase in ADAM9 RNA with responses to Damage-Associated Molecular Pattern molecules (DAMPs) and tissue remodeling. Further evidence demonstrating the association of ADAM9 with tissue damage and injury was found in public transcriptome datasets generated by investigators employing mouse in vivo models and a human in vitro system ( supplementary Figure 6): 1) abundance of ADAM9 transcript increased over time at 0, 2 hours, 3 days following thermal injury in a murine dermal burn wound model ( GSE460); 2) An epidermal injury model ( GSE30355) showed that abundance of ADAM9 was significantly higher in injured epidermis (sorted human keratinocyte (KC)) in comparison to uninjured cells (laser capture microscopy or in vitro cultured keratinocytes) 39. And 3) abundance of ADAM9 transcripts was increased lungs of C57BL/6 mice that developed acute lung injury after exposure to low-dose LPS and mechanical ventilation ( GSE2411) in an vivo model of lung inflammation and injury ( GSE2411) 40.
Table 4. Increased abundance of ADAM9 following tissue injury and sterile inflammation.
GEO ID | A vs B | Avg A-Avg B | Avg A/Avg B | P value |
---|---|---|---|---|
GSE34608 | Sarcoidosis VS Control | 56.4 | 1.9 | < 0.0001 |
Tuberculosis VS control | 56.9 | 1.9 | < 0.0001 | |
GSE11375 | Survived VS Control | 17.7 | 1.2 | 0.0367 |
Died VS Control | 45.2 | 1.6 | 0.0226 | |
Survived VS Died | 27.5 | 1.3 | 0.0473 | |
GSE15072 | HD VS Healthy | 545.6 | 7.6 | < 0.0001 |
CKD VS Healthy | 94.3 | 2.1 | 0.0359 | |
GSE28750 | Post surgery VS Healthy | 153.2 | 5.1 | < 0.0001 |
Sepsis VS Healthy | 281.8 | 8.5 | < 0.0001 | |
GSE30174 ** | Healthy VS Baseline | 35.8 | 1.1 | 0.7243 |
Healthy VS 1h EBRT | -91.3 | 0.9 | 0.4727 | |
Healthy VS D7 EBRT | 236.5 | 1.4 | 0.1419 | |
Healthy VS D14 EBRT | 455.8 | 1.7 | 0.0068 | |
Healthy VS D21 EBRT | 643.8 | 2.0 | 0.0021 | |
Healthy VS D42 EBRT | 272.1 | 1.4 | 0.2150 | |
Healthy VS 1 mo Post Tx | 85.8 | 1.1 | 0.5678 | |
GSE32575 | Obese before surgery VS control | 34.1 | 1.3 | < 0.0001 |
Obese post surgery VS control | 19.0 | 1.2 | 0.0001 | |
GSE5580 | TP mono VS HC mono | 247.1 | 1.7 | 0.0070 |
TP Leukocyte VS HC Leukocyte | 233.2 | 2.9 | 0.0006 | |
TP T cell VS HC T cell | 57.9 | 3.0 | 0.0175 |
Note : Avg = average abundance of ADAM9 within a given group. Statistical significance was determined using Mann-Whitney U test. ** This dataset was tested by One-way ANOVA and Dunnett’s multiple comparisons test, P value summary = 0.0042.
Conclusions
This study is the first report describing the modulation of levels of ADAM9 transcripts in human whole blood and showing restriction of its expression to neutrophils and monocytes. In addition we observed that the abundance of ADAM9 was increased during acute infection but did not change after stimulation with pathogen-derived molecules. It was not changed in vivo following administration of synthetic double stranded RNA (polyIC), a treatment that mimics viral exposure. Notably, it was not increased either in patients during the early acute phase of HIV infection when an intense immunological response is detected in absence of clinical symptoms iFigure/ GSE29536] 22. However, ADAM9 transcript abundance was increased in the blood of patients as a result of tissue damage, sterile inflammation and tissue remodeling. Therefore, in addition to its widely reported role in the pathogenesis of cancer the constellation of findings that we are reporting point towards the involvement of ADAM9 in immune-mediated processes and suggest that ADAM9 may constitute a valuable marker for assessing tissue damage, whether it occurs as result of acute infection, traumatic injury or medical procedures such as surgery or radiation therapy. Furthermore, our observations may also be of high significance in the context of acute infections since unlike “generic” markers of inflammation, that could also be used to assess tissue injury in other settings, ADAM9 would not be confounded by the host responses to the pathogen and may therefore accurately reflect damage to the patient tissues or organs ( Figure 6). Thus ADAM9 blood transcript levels, or possibly levels of circulating proteins, could potentially be employed for triage of patients presenting with symptoms of infection in the emergency room or for monitoring of patients in intensive care units. The functional significance of elevated levels of this proteinase in blood of patients is unclear. While it has been associated with tissue repair increase in protein or transcript levels in the circulation may be an indication of catastrophic tissue damage that will lead to poor outcomes. This is suggested for instance by the fact that abundance of ADAM9 in patients who did not survive was significantly higher than those who survive (GSE11375 - profiling of responses in the blood of trauma patient). In another dataset GSE34205/GSE38900 (Viral infections) we also show that abundance of ADAM9 is correlated with degree of severity in pediatric viral infection (RSV, influenza and HRV infection), moreover level of ADAM9 transcript in patients who were ventilated were significantly higher than that who were non-ventilated.
Our analytic approach consisted in the interpretation of transcriptional profiles of a single gene across multiple systems-scale profiling studies. The data from the different studies were not merged in a single unified meta-analysis. Thus it would be more appropriate to qualify this work as a “meta-interpretation”. It proved successful at identifying among a constellation of findings a common thread, the concomitant elevation of ADAM9 with conditions associated with extensive tissue damage. Concerns with regards to the quality of the public data used as input for meta-interpretation, for instance the introduction of uncontrolled confounding factors that may be technical (batch effects) or biological (demographics, treatment), should be mitigated by the fact that conclusions are based on data drawn from not one but multiple studies, and that these were vetted by institutional review boards and peer review. These mechanisms should ensure that only a minority of those studies would be affected by critical design or technical flaws. However, we also recognize that in silico cross-validation of seminal observations does not obviate the need for follow on studies or experimentation. Finally, the fact that the approach presented relies on interpretation of transcriptional profiles derived from a relatively large number of transcriptional studies presents another challenge given that the amount of background information that can be provided for each study cannot be exhaustive. The data browsing web application that we have used attempts to address this limitation by providing readers access to interactive figures that they can drill into to access detailed sample and study information. Taken together this study provides an original framework for the design of strategies aiming at leveraging vast amounts of high resolution molecular phenotyping data available in public repositories.
Data availability
The data referenced by this article are under copyright with the following copyright statement: Copyright: © 2016 Rinchai D et al.
Data associated with the article are available under the terms of the Creative Commons Zero "No rights reserved" data waiver (CC0 1.0 Public domain dedication). http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
All primary data presented in this manuscript can be accessed along with contextual information via the data browsing application described above and is also available in NCBI’s GEO public repository. GEO accession numbers (starting with GSE) are provided where appropriate throughout this manuscript along with the primary reference associated with the GEO record.
F1000Research: Dataset 1. Raw data of ADAM9 transcripts in blood in response to tissue damage, 10.5256/f1000research.6241.d138863 41
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Dr Laurent Chiche for constructive comments on this manuscript. We would also especially like to thank all the authors of the studies cited in this paper for making their data publically available.
Funding Statement
The author(s) declared that no grants were involved in supporting this work.
[version 2; referees: 3 approved]
Supplementary Figures
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