Bacterial cellulose shifts transcriptome and proteome of cultured endothelial cells towards native differentiation

Statistical analysis of 12,475 transcripts and 7,831 proteins unveiled massive quantitative differences of the compared transcriptomes and proteomes. K-means clustering followed by network analysis showed that HUVEC on plastic up-regulate transcripts and proteins controlling proliferation, cell cycle and protein biosynthesis. In contrast, HUVEC on Xellulin maintained, by and large, the expression levels of genes supporting their native biological functions and signaling networks such as integrin, receptor tyrosine kinase MAP/ERK and PI3K signaling pathways, while decreasing the expression of proliferation associated proteins. Moreover, CD34 – an endothelial cell differentiation marker usually lost early during cell culture – was re-expressed within two weeks on Xellulin but not on plastic. And HUVEC on Xellulin showed a significantly stronger functional responsiveness to a prototypic pro-inflammatory stimulus than HUVEC on plastic.

Taken together, this is one of the most comprehensive transcriptomic and proteomic studies of native and propagated HUVEC, which underscores the importance of the morphology of the cellular microenvironment to regulate cellular differentiation, and demonstrates, for the first time, the potential of Xellulin as versatile tool promoting an in vivo-like phenotype in primary and propagated cell culture. Copyright © 2017, The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.