Transcriptome, proteome, and metabolome of lens fiber cells from mice exposed to cigarette smoke

We adopted an omics (transcriptome, proteome, and metabolome) approach to characterize the lens fiber cells extracted from control (CT) and cigarette smoke (CS) exposed mouse (C57BL/6) eyes. The eight pregnant female mice (gestation days 19-20) were placed in a whole-body exposure smoking chamber and served as a CS-exposed group. The mothers and newborn pups were exposed to CS for five hours/day, five days/week for 110 days. In parallel, age-matched mice were kept in normal cages and served as a control group. The ophthalmic examination revealed no sign of cataracts in CS-exposed and aged-matched CT mice. The ocular lenses were extracted and fiber cells (FC) were separated from the lens epithelium under a microscope. The CT and CS fiber cells were maintained in four biological replicates each consisting of a pool of lens fiber cells from four eyes. The eight biological replicates including four CT and four CS-exposed fiber cells were used for the next-generation-based transcriptome (RNA-Seq), mass-spectrometry-based proteome, and metabolome profiling. RNA-Seq analysis identified the expression (≥1.0 FPKM) of 9,590 and 9,531 genes in CT and CS-exposed fiber cells, respectively. The analysis identified 348 differentially expressed genes, including 186 downregulated and 162 upregulated genes in CS-exposed fiber cells. Proteome profiling revealed a total of 2,424 proteins in CT and CS exposed fiber cells. The analysis identified 42 downregulated and 59 upregulated proteins in CS exposed fiber cells. Metabolome profiling identified a total of 280 metabolites, marked with decreased levels of branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs)-related metabolites in CS exposed fiber cells. In conclusion, we have established a comprehensive omics profile of fiber cells from CS-exposed mice. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report investigating a comprehensive omics profile of fiber cells from CS-exposed mice.