Tissue-specific RNA-seq in human evoked inflammation identifies novel blood and adipose lincRNA signatures of cardio-metabolic diseases

Inappropriate or sustained activation of innate immunity is a pathologic feature of several common cardio-metabolic disorders. Little is known, however, about transcriptomic modulation during inflammatory stress in disease-relevant human tissues. We applied deep RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) during low-dose experimental endotoxemia (LPS) in healthy humans to interrogate, in an unbiased manner, inflammatory tissue-level transcriptome responses of relevance to complex cardio-metabolic diseases. We utilized adipose and blood samples from three individuals who underwent a standardized inpatient endotoxemia protocol. Our comprehensive analysis revealed substantial, highly tissue- and subject-specific LPS-modulated changes in the expression of protein-coding genes and linc-RNAs as well as alternative splicing (AS). We also confirmed adipocytes and macrophages as potential cell sources of selective LPS-modulated linc-RNAs and AS events. Finally, we defined disease relevance of a subset of findings in obese adipose tissue and through interrogation of overlap with genome-wide association study loci for cardio-metabolic traits. Our findings provide novel insights into tissue-level genomic regulation, not detectable through analysis of DNA variations alone, of relevance to common cardio-metabolic diseases. Using RNA-seq data to study LPS-modulated changes in lincRNA expression for adipose and blood of a healthy individual.