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The effects of death and post-mortem cold ischemia on human tissue transcriptomes.

Nature communications | 2018

Post-mortem tissues samples are a key resource for investigating patterns of gene expression. However, the processes triggered by death and the post-mortem interval (PMI) can significantly alter physiologically normal RNA levels. We investigate the impact of PMI on gene expression using data from multiple tissues of post-mortem donors obtained from the GTEx project. We find that many genes change expression over relatively short PMIs in a tissue-specific manner, but this potentially confounding effect in a biological analysis can be minimized by taking into account appropriate covariates. By comparing ante- and post-mortem blood samples, we identify the cascade of transcriptional events triggered by death of the organism. These events do not appear to simply reflect stochastic variation resulting from mRNA degradation, but active and ongoing regulation of transcription. Finally, we develop a model to predict the time since death from the analysis of the transcriptome of a few readily accessible tissues.

Pubmed ID: 29440659 RIS Download

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Associated grants

  • Agency: European Research Council, International
    Id: 294653
  • Agency: NHGRI NIH HHS, United States
    Id: U41 HG009494
  • Agency: NIMH NIH HHS, United States
    Id: R01 MH101814

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Ensembl (tool)

RRID:SCR_002344

Collection of genome databases for vertebrates and other eukaryotic species with DNA and protein sequence search capabilities. Used to automatically annotate genome, integrate this annotation with other available biological data and make data publicly available via web. Ensembl tools include BLAST, BLAT, BioMart and the Variant Effect Predictor (VEP) for all supported species.

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edgeR (tool)

RRID:SCR_012802

Bioconductor software package for Empirical analysis of Digital Gene Expression data in R. Used for differential expression analysis of RNA-seq and digital gene expression data with biological replication.

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