Browsing by Author "Wu, Yan"

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    Aberrantly elevated Wnt signaling is responsible for cementum overgrowth and dental ankylosis
    (Elsevier, 2018) Wu, Yan; Yuan, Xue; Perez, Kristy C.; Hyman, Sydnee; Wang, Liao; Pellegrini, Gretel; Salmon, Benjamin; Bellido, Teresita; Helms, Jill A.; Anatomy and Cell Biology, School of Medicine
    Vertebrate teeth are attached to the jawbones using a variety of methods but in mammals, a fibrous connection is the norm. This fibrous periodontal ligament (PDL) allows teeth to move in the jawbones in response to natural eruptive forces, mastication, and orthodontic tooth movement. In some disease states the PDL either calcifies or is replaced by a mineralized tissue and the result is ankylosis, where the tooth is fused to the alveolar bone. To understand how the PDL maintains this fibrous state we examined a strain of mice in which tooth movement is arrested. DaβcatOt mice express a stabilized form of β-catenin in DMP1-positive alveolar bone osteocytes and cementocytes, which results in elevated Wnt signaling throughout the periodontium. As a consequence, there is an accrual of massive amounts of cellular cementum and alveolar bone, the PDL itself calcifies and teeth become ankylosed. These data suggest that to maintain its fibrous nature, Wnt signaling must normally be repressed in the PDL space.
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    An atlas of healthy and injured cell states and niches in the human kidney
    (Springer Nature, 2023) Lake, Blue B.; Menon, Rajasree; Winfree, Seth; Hu, Qiwen; Ferreira, Ricardo Melo; Kalhor, Kian; Barwinska, Daria; Otto, Edgar A.; Ferkowicz, Michael; Diep, Dinh; Plongthongkum, Nongluk; Knoten, Amanda; Urata, Sarah; Mariani, Laura H.; Naik, Abhijit S.; Eddy, Sean; Zhang, Bo; Wu, Yan; Salamon, Diane; Williams, James C.; Wang, Xin; Balderrama, Karol S.; Hoover, Paul J.; Murray, Evan; Marshall, Jamie L.; Noel, Teia; Vijayan, Anitha; Hartman, Austin; Chen, Fei; Waikar, Sushrut S.; Rosas, Sylvia E.; Wilson, Francis P.; Palevsky, Paul M.; Kiryluk, Krzysztof; Sedor, John R.; Toto, Robert D.; Parikh, Chirag R.; Kim, Eric H.; Satija, Rahul; Greka, Anna; Macosko, Evan Z.; Kharchenko, Peter V.; Gaut, Joseph P.; Hodgin, Jeffrey B.; KPMP Consortium; Eadon, Michael T.; Dagher, Pierre C.; El-Achkar, Tarek M.; Zhang, Kun; Kretzler, Matthias; Jain, Sanjay; Medicine, School of Medicine
    Understanding kidney disease relies on defining the complexity of cell types and states, their associated molecular profiles and interactions within tissue neighbourhoods1. Here we applied multiple single-cell and single-nucleus assays (>400,000 nuclei or cells) and spatial imaging technologies to a broad spectrum of healthy reference kidneys (45 donors) and diseased kidneys (48 patients). This has provided a high-resolution cellular atlas of 51 main cell types, which include rare and previously undescribed cell populations. The multi-omic approach provides detailed transcriptomic profiles, regulatory factors and spatial localizations spanning the entire kidney. We also define 28 cellular states across nephron segments and interstitium that were altered in kidney injury, encompassing cycling, adaptive (successful or maladaptive repair), transitioning and degenerative states. Molecular signatures permitted the localization of these states within injury neighbourhoods using spatial transcriptomics, while large-scale 3D imaging analysis (around 1.2 million neighbourhoods) provided corresponding linkages to active immune responses. These analyses defined biological pathways that are relevant to injury time-course and niches, including signatures underlying epithelial repair that predicted maladaptive states associated with a decline in kidney function. This integrated multimodal spatial cell atlas of healthy and diseased human kidneys represents a comprehensive benchmark of cellular states, neighbourhoods, outcome-associated signatures and publicly available interactive visualizations.