Conditionally reprogrammed primary airway epithelial cells maintain morphology, lineage and disease specific functional characteristics

© 2017 The Author(s). Current limitations to primary cell expansion led us to test whether airway epithelial cells derived from healthy children and those with asthma and cystic fibrosis (CF), co-cultured with an irradiated fibroblast feeder cell in F-medium containing 10 µM ROCK inhibitor could maintain their lineage during expansion and whether this is influenced by underlying disease status. Here, we show that conditionally reprogrammed airway epithelial cells (CRAECs) can be established from both healthy and diseased phenotypes. CRAECs can be expanded, cryopreserved and maintain phenotypes over at least 5 passages. Population doublings of CRAEC cultures were significantly greater than standard cultures, but maintained their lineage characteristics. CRAECs from all phenotypes were also capable of fully differentiating at air-liquid interface (ALI) and maintained disease specific characteristics including; defective CFTR channel function cultures and the inability to repair wounds. Our findings indicate that CRAECs derived from children maintain lineage, phenotypic and importantly disease-specific functional characteristics over a specified passage range

HVP10 encoding V-PPase is a prime candidate for the barley HvNax3 sodium exclusion gene: evidence from fine mapping and expression analysis

In cereals, a common salinity tolerance mechanism is to limit accumulation of Na(+) in the shoot. In a cross between the barley variety Barque-73 (Hordeum vulgare ssp. vulgare) and the accession CPI-71284 of wild barley (H. vulgare ssp. spontaneum), the HvNax3 locus on chromosome 7H was found to determine a ~10-25 % difference in leaf Na(+) accumulation in seedlings grown in saline hydroponics, with the beneficial exclusion trait originating from the wild parent. The Na(+) exclusion allele was also associated with a 13-21 % increase in shoot fresh weight. The HvNax3 locus was delimited to a 0.4 cM genetic interval, where it cosegregated with the HVP10 gene for vacuolar H(+)-pyrophosphatase (V-PPase). Sequencing revealed that the mapping parents encoded identical HVP10 proteins, but salinity-induced mRNA expression of HVP10 was higher in CPI-71284 than in Barque-73, in both roots and shoots. By contrast, the expression of several other genes predicted by comparative mapping to be located in the HvNax3 interval was similar in the two parent lines. Previous work demonstrated roles for V-PPase in ion transport and salinity tolerance. We therefore considered transcription levels of HVP10 to be a possible basis for variation in shoot Na(+) accumulation and biomass production controlled by the HvNax3 locus under saline conditions. Potential mechanisms linking HVP10 expression patterns to the observed phenotypes are discussed.Yuri Shavrukov, Jessica Bovill, Irfan Afzal, Julie E. Hayes, Stuart J. Roy, Mark Tester, Nicholas C. Collin