Influence of CEBPD on Glucocorticoid Response in Airway Smooth Muscle

CCAAT/Enhancer Binding Protein D (CEBPD) is a transcription factor that regulates genes involved in immune and inflammatory responses. Based on our previous observation that CEBPD expression increases in airway smooth muscle (ASM) with glucocorticoid exposure, we sought to better understand its role in the ASM transcriptomic response to glucocorticoids via knockdown experiments. Primary human airway smooth muscle (ASM) cells from four non-asthma donors were transfected with 25pmol of siRNA non-targeting control or siCEBPD SMARTpool using RNAiMax. Three days after transfection, cells were treated with 100nM Budesonide, 10ng/ml TNF-alpha, or both for 18 hours. RNA-Seq libraries were prepared with the Kapa mRNA HyperPrep Illumina Library kit. An Illumina HiSeq 2500 instrument was used to generate 125 base pair paired-end reads. STAR was used to align sequencing reads to the hg38 reference genome, and HTSeq was used to quantify transcript levels. DESeq2 was used to perform differential expression analysis. Overall design: Transcriptome profiles obtained via RNA-Seq for ASM cells from four donors per condition, with and without CEBPD knockdown, and with budesonide, TNF-alpha, budesonide+TNF-alpha or vehicle control treatment were obtained to measure the effects of CEBPD knockdown on glucocorticoid response in ASM.