Induction of developmental and inflammatory transcriptomes in PGP fibroblasts

To identify genetic polymorphisms responsible for common phenotypic variants, one must examine single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) affecting the protein function, or the gene regulation. Since SNPs in the non-coding region are vastly more common, the latter may play a larger role; however, this requires examining the transcriptome from multiple tissues. While induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) can be used to generate multiple cell types in vitro, a high throughput method for targeted cell reprogramming will be more practical and interpretable. We induce developmental plasticity by transiently expressing pluripotency factors using retrovirus or adenovirus. The induced plasticity brings out differences not ordinarily seen among fibroblasts. We also show that the innate immune response triggered by adenovirus has additional effects on the cellular development and induces multiple markers of inflammation. Because of its scalability, it may enable broad examination of normal and medically relevant complex traits in a large number of individuals. In order see the new transcripts captured by transient pluripotency infection using retrovirus and adenovirus, we took primary fibroblasts and infected them with appropriate viral vectors. The total RNA was extracted and used to see newly induced genes induced by these factors (above the background level). The aim was to see any additional genes captured using transient reprogramming in addition to fibroblasts.