Spatial Transcriptomic: a state-of-the-art method that reveals fundamental information about the musculoskeletal system
The skeletal muscle is an organised structure comprising well-defined anatomical districts, such as blood vessels, connective tissue and nerves, each with specific tasks.
To date, the direct correlation between tissue structure and gene expression is unclear. Hence the difficulty in establishing how each unit corresponds to specific physio-pathological contexts.
It was precisely to investigate these factors that a collaboration was set up between the Sapienza University study group led by Luca Madaro of the Department of Anatomical, Histological, Medical-Legal Sciences and Locomotor Apparatus and the Sorbonne University in Paris led by Lorenzo Giordani. Alberto Macone and Laura Ciapponi from Sapienza University and Claudio Sette from the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore also took part in the work.
The study, published in the journal Cell Reports, highlights the potential of an innovative method called Spatial Transcriptomic in bridging the information gap on the correlation between skeletal muscle structure and gene expression: this approach, together with a temporal analysis, has made it possible to establish how genes are regulated in specific districts of the apparatus and how this gene expression changes due to external perturbations.
The innovative process consists of a combination of transcriptomics, a discipline that studies all messenger RNAs called transcriptomes, and immunofluorescence, an immunological technique that allows the detection and localisation of a wide variety of antigens in a given tissue or cell.
Through this technique, it was possible to obtain other information of considerable importance on the spatial distribution of the enzymes responsible for the synthesis of polyamines, which appears to be confined to a part of the muscle corresponding to the muscle fibres with glycolytic metabolism, and the expression of these genes appears to be nerve-dependent. In fact, in the event of nerve injury, an alteration in the expression of these genes is observed.
These results led the researchers to hypothesise that restoring the balance in polyamine synthesis could represent a valid therapeutic strategy in traumatic or genetic pathologies where the muscle is denervated. Only future studies will, however, be able to confirm and prove this innovative hypothesis.
References
Spatially resolved transcriptomics reveals innervation-responsive functional clusters in skeletal muscle - Chiara D’Ercole, Paolo D’Angelo, Veronica Ruggieri, ..., Claudio Sette, Lorenzo Giordani, Luca Madaro – Cell Reports 2022
Further Information
Luca Madaro
Department of Anatomical, Histological, Medical-Legal Sciences and Locomotor Apparatus