Gene expression response to 5 microbial stimuli in Detroit562 cells [RNA-seq]

NFKB is a family of transcription factors (TF), which are master regulators of the innate immune system. It is activated downstream of pathogen recognition receptors after ligand binding and regulates the expression of antimicrobials, cytokines and chemokines, thus helping to fight infections as well as recruiting the adaptive immune system. Although NFKB responds to a wide variety of signals, the processes in which stimulus-specificity is attained are still unclear. We characterized the response of one of the NFKB members, RELA, to five stimuli mimicking infection in nasopharyngeal epithelial cells. We wanted to investigate gene expression in response to these stimuli as well, in order to relate RELA binding to differences to expression regulation. Although most RELA binding sites where common among stimulation, we distinguished a minority of stimulus-specific RELA binding sites. Interestingly, some of these seemed to have a biological effect as they correlated with corresponding gene expression. Especially, the response to Poly I:C mimicking viral dsRNA gave a distinct RELA profile binding the vicinity of antiviral genes. Some of which were overexpressed under Poly I:C stimulation specifically. Treatment of Detroit 562 cells with 5 stimuli: LPS, TNFα, Pam2CSK4, Poly I:C or M tri-DAP followed by gene expression analysis by RNA-seq. Two biological duplicates were analyzed for each condition.