Johannes Rainer

Eurac Research · Institute for Biomedicine

We present version 2 of the MSnbase R/Bioconductor package. MSnbase provides infrastructure for the manipulation, processing and visualisation of mass spectrometry data. We focus on the new on-disk infrastructure, that allows the handling of large raw mass spectrometry experiments on commodity hardware and illustrate how the package is used for ele...

Bioinformatics research frequently involves handling gene-centric data such as exons, transcripts, proteins and their positions relative to a reference coordinate system. The ensembldb Bioconductor package retrieves and stores Ensembl-based genetic annotations and positional information, and furthermore offers identifier conversion and coordinates...

Metabolomics aims to measure and characterise the complex composition of metabolites in a biological system. Metabolomics studies involve sophisticated analytical techniques such as mass spectrometry and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, and generate large amounts of high-dimensional and complex experimental data. Open source processing and...

Molecular networking has become a key method to visualize and annotate the chemical space in non-targeted mass spectrometry data. We present feature-based molecular networking (FBMN) as an analysis method in the Global Natural Products Social Molecular Networking (GNPS) infrastructure that builds on chromatographic feature detection and alignment t...

Metabolomics in human serum samples provide a snapshot of the current metabolic state of an individuum. Metabolite concentrations are influenced by both genetic and environmental factors. Concentrations of certain metabolites can further depend on age, sex, menopause, and diet of study participants. A better understanding of these relationships is...

Large-scale plasma proteomics in population studies offer new avenues to explore non-genetic associations, such as biomarkers for lifestyle and environmental exposure. Moreover, through longitudinal monitoring, they help in characterizing the onset and progression of diseases. Utilizing the SWATH DIA-MS-based proteomic approach with 5-minute chroma...

Human induced pluripotent stem cell derived cardiomyocytes (hiPSC-CMs) are commonly used to model arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy (ACM), a heritable cardiac disease characterized by severe ventricular arrhythmias, fibrofatty myocardial replacement and progressive ventricular dysfunction. Although ACM is inherited as an autosomal dominant disease, inc...

Volumetric absorptive microsampling (VAMS) is a recently developed sample collection method that enables single-drop blood collection in a minimally invasive manner. Blood biomolecules can then be extracted and processed for analysis using several analytical platforms. The integration of VAMS with conventional mass spectrometry (MS)-based metabolom...

Even though raw mass spectrometry data is information rich, the vast majority of the data is underutilized. The ability to interrogate these rich datasets is handicapped by the limited capability and flexibility of existing software. We introduce the Mass Spec Query Language (MassQL) that addresses these issues by enabling an expressive set of mass...

Background Diet is known to affect kidney function. However, population-based studies provide contrasting evidence, resulting in a poor understanding of the effect of proteins from specific foods on kidney health. Methods We analyzed the effect of total daily protein intake (TDPI) and source-specific daily protein intake (DPI) on fasting serum cre...

Metabolites are intermediates or end products of biochemical processes involved in both health and disease. Here, we take advantage of the well-characterized Cooperative Health Research in South Tyrol (CHRIS) study to perform an exome-wide association study (ExWAS) on absolute concentrations of 175 metabolites in 3294 individuals. To increase power...

Arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy (ACM) is a genetic disease associated with sudden cardiac death and cardiac fibro‐fatty replacement. Over the last years, several works have demonstrated that different epigenetic enzymes can affect not only gene expression changes in cardiac diseases but also cellular metabolism. Specifically, the histone acetyltransf...

Liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS)-based untargeted metabolomics experiments have become increasingly popular because of the wide range of metabolites that can be analyzed and the possibility to measure novel compounds. LC-MS instrumentation and analysis conditions can differ substantially among laboratories and experiments, thus resul...

LC–MS-based untargeted metabolomics is heavily dependent on algorithms for automated peak detection and data preprocessing due to the complexity and size of the raw data generated. These algorithms are generally designed to be as inclusive as possible in order to minimize the number of missed peaks. This is known to result in an abundance of false...

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a supraventricular arrhythmia deriving from uncoordinated electrical activation with considerable associated morbidity and mortality. To expand the limited understanding of AF biological mechanisms, we performed two screenings, investigating the genetic and metabolic determinants of AF in the Cooperative Health Research...

Data overview for LC-MS untargeted metabolomics acquired from CHRIS study

Serum samples collected from 5000 subjects were analyzed using Absolute IDQ p180 Kit from Biocrates, allowing the quantification of 186 metabolites by combining flow injection analysis and liquid chromatography assays and covering acylcarnitines (40), amino acids (21), biogenic amines (19), phosphatidylcholines (76), lyso-phosphatidylcholines (14),...

Using the large data set available from CHRIS (Cooperative Health Research in South Tyrol) study we here describe serum metabolites from 6872 participants which were found to be associated with sex, age and body mass index.

Molecular networking connects mass spectra of molecules based on the similarity of their fragmentation patterns. However, during ionization, molecules commonly form multiple ion species with different fragmentation behavior. As a result, the fragmentation spectra of these ion species often remain unconnected in tandem mass spectrometry-based molecu...

Background Adipose-derived stem cells (ASC) and adipocytes are involved in numerous physiological and pathophysiological conditions, which have been extensively described in subcutaneous and visceral fat depots over the past two decades. However, much less is known about ASC and adipocytes outside classical fat tissue depots and their necessity in...

Arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy (ACM) is a genetic-based cardiac disease accompanied by severe ventricular arrhythmias and a progressive substitution of the myocardium with fibro-fatty tissue. ACM is often associated with sudden cardiac death. Due to the reduced penetrance and variable expressivity, the presence of a genetic defect is not conclusive,...

Glucocorticoids (GCs) are an essential component of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) therapy. To identify genes mediating the anti-leukemic GC effects in vivo, we performed gene expression profiling of lymphoblasts from 46 children during the first 6-24h of systemic GC mono-therapy. Differential gene expression analysis across all patients reveal...

Molecular networking connects tandem mass spectra of molecules based on the similarity of their fragmentation patterns. However, during ionization, molecules commonly form multiple ion species with different fragmentation behavior. To connect ion species of the same molecule, we developed Ion Identity Molecular Networking. These new relationships i...

We present version 2 of the MSnbase R/Bioconductor package. MSnbase provides infrastructure for the manipulation, processing and visualisation of mass spectrometry data. We focus on the new on-disk infrastructure, that allows the handling of large raw mass spectrometry experiment on commodity hardware and illustrate how the package is used for eleg...

Molecular networking has become a key method used to visualize and annotate the chemical space in non-targeted mass spectrometry-based experiments. However, distinguishing isomeric compounds and quantitative interpretation are currently limited. Therefore, we created Feature-based Molecular Networking (FBMN) as a new analysis method in the Global N...

Late endosomal/lysosomal adaptor and MAPK and mTOR activator (LAMTOR/Ragulator) is a scaffold protein complex that anchors and regulates multiprotein signaling units on late endosomes/lysosomes. To identify LAMTOR‐modulated endolysosomal proteins, primary macrophages were derived from bone marrow of conditional knockout mice carrying a specific del...

Delta-like homolog 1 (DLK1), an inhibitor of adipogenesis, controls the cell fate of adipocyte progenitors. Here we identify two independent regulatory mechanisms, transcriptional and translational, by which TIS7 (IFRD1) and its orthologue SKMc15 (IFRD2) regulate DLK1 levels. Mice deficient in both TIS7 and SKMc15 (dKO) had severely reduced adipose...

Background: Plasma and serum are the most widely used matrices in clinical studies. However, some variability in absolute concentrations of metabolites are likely to be observed in these collection tubes matrices. Methods: We analyzed 189 metabolites using the same protocol for quantitative targeted metabolomics (LC-MS/MS AbsoluteIDQ p180 Kit Bi...

Motivation Familial aggregation analysis is an important early step for characterizing the genetic determinants of phenotypes in epidemiological studies. To facilitate this analysis, a collection of methods to detect familial aggregation in large pedigrees has been made available recently. However, efficacy of these methods in real world scenarios...

Background: Arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy (ACM) is a genetic autosomal disease characterized by abnormal cell-cell adhesion, cardiomyocyte death, progressive fibro-adipose replacement of the myocardium, arrhythmias and sudden death. Several different cell types contribute to the pathogenesis of ACM, including, as recently described, cardiac stroma...

Human abdominal subcutaneous adipose tissue consists of two individual layers—the superficial adipose tissue (SAT) and deep adipose tissue (DAT)—separated by the Scarpa’s fascia. The present study focuses on the analysis of morphological and immunological differences of primary adipocytes, adipose-derived stem cells (ASC), and tissue-infiltrating i...

This work evaluated gene expression differences between a hanging-drop 3D NSCLC model and 2D cell cultures and their in-vivo relevance by comparison to patient-derived data from The Cancer Genome Atlas. Gene expression of 2D and 3D cultures for Colo699 and A549 were assessed using Affymetrix HuGene 1.0 ST gene chips. Biostatistical analyses tested...

Volumetric absorptive microsampling (VAMS) is a novel approach that allows single-drop (10 μL) blood collection. Integration of VAMS with mass spectrometry (MS)-based untargeted metabolomics is an attractive solution for both human and animal studies. However, to boost the use of VAMS in metabolomics, key pre-analytical questions need to be address...

Extinction-based exposure therapy is used to treat anxiety- and trauma-related disorders; however, there is the need to improve its limited efficacy in individuals with impaired fear extinction learning and to promote greater protection against return-of-fear phenomena. Here, using 129S1/SvImJ mice, which display impaired fear extinction acquisitio...

Introduction: Due to the increasing understanding of the mechanisms relevant to the genesis of cancer, we are experiencing a transition from disease to target-oriented therapy. One major hurdle for the development of these targeted therapeutic regimens, however, is the limited availability of predictive in vitro models. The critical challenge is to...

Due to the urgent need for new prostate cancer (PCa) therapies, the role of androgen receptor (AR) interacting proteins should be investigated. In this study we aimed to address whether the AR coactivator nuclear receptor coactivator 1 (NCOA1) is involved in PCa progression. Therefore, we tested the effect of long-term NCOA1 knockdown on processes...

Data S1. Methods and results. Figure S1. Venn diagram showing the number and overlap of the SAPs’ genes. Benign = unique number of genes of the benign SAPs; pathogenic = unique number of genes of the pathogenic SAPs. (A) training data set. (B) validation data set. Figure S2. Overlap of the training and validation datasets with ExoVar, HumVar, Swi...

Table S5. “Difficult SAPs” (without SAPs from HGMD).

Skeletal muscle excitation-contraction (EC) coupling is independent of calcium influx. In fact alternative splicing of the voltage-gated calcium channel CaV1.1 actively suppresses calcium currents in mature muscle. Whether this is necessary for normal development and function of muscle is not known. However, splicing defects causing aberrant expres...

Background: Although several methods have been proposed for predicting the effects of genetic variants and their role in disease, it is still a challenge to identify and prioritize pathogenic variants within sequencing studies. Methods: Here, we compare different variant and gene-specific features as well as existing methods and investigate thei...

Familial aggregation analysis is the first fundamental step to perform when assessing the extent of genetic background of a disease. However, there is a lack of software to analyze the familial clustering of complex phenotypes in very large pedigrees. Such pedigrees can be utilized to calculate measures that express trait aggregation on both the fa...

Supporting Information

Table s1

Figure S1. Representative tandem mass spectrum for PAX‐5 protein (peptide sequence:ANLASPTPADIGSSVPGPQSYPIVTGR). 932.8, triply charged ion. The inset shows the peak area at the low mass/charge (m/z) region with the iTRAQ reporter ions. Figure S2. Differential induction of IRF4 protein in PreB 697 compared to R3F9 cell lines in response to dexameth...

Genome-wide association studies have identified genomic loci, whose single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) predispose to prostate cancer (PCa). However, the mechanisms of most of these variants are largely unknown. We integrated chromatin-IP coupled sequencing and microarray expression profiling in TMPRSS2-ERG gene rearrangement positive DUCaP cell...

Glucocorticoid (GC) resistance is a continuing clinical problem in childhood acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. A proteomic approach was used to compare profiles of the B-lineage ALL GC-sensitive cell line, PreB 697, and its GC-resistant sub-line, R3F9, pre- and post-dexamethasone exposure. PAX5, a tra...

This is a correspondence about “Beclin‐1 is required for chromosome congression and proper outer kinetochore assembly”.

Introduction: Increasing efforts to integrate tumour-stroma interaction and 3-dimensional structures in innovative in-vitro models were made within the last years. We established a 3D co-culture system in non-small-cell lung cancer applicable for drug testing. In this work, we present data on the differences in RNA expression and drug sensitivity i...

The normal prostate as well as early-stages and advanced prostate cancer (PCa) require a functional androgen receptor (AR) for growth and survival. The recent discovery of microRNAs (miRNAs) as novel effector molecules of AR disclosed the existence of an intricate network between AR, miRNAs and down-stream target genes. In this study DUCaP cells, c...

Background In the treatment of advanced prostate cancer (PCa) a common strategy is to interfere with androgen receptor (AR) transcriptional activity by means of androgen deprivation. Despite an initial good response, the majority of tumors eventually progress to an androgen-independent phenotype, known as castrate-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) w...

FOXO transcription factors control cellular levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS) which critically contribute to cell survival and cell death in neuroblastoma. In the present study we investigated the regulation of C10orf10/DEPP by the transcription factor FOXO3. As a physiological function of C10orf10/DEPP has not been described so far we analyz...

Glucocorticoids (GCs) cause apoptosis in malignant cells of lymphoid lineage by transcriptionally regulating a plethora of genes. As a result, GCs are included in almost all treatment protocols for lymphoid malignancies, particularly childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (chALL). The most commonly used synthetic GCs in the clinical setting are pre...

Purpose: The eukaryotic translation initiation factor (eIF) 3a, the largest subunit of the eIF3 complex, is a key functional entity in ribosome establishment and translation initiation. In the past, aberrant eIF3a expression has been linked to the pathology of various cancer types but, so far, its expression has not been investigated in transition...

Glucocorticoids (GCs) are natural stress induced steroid hormones causing cell cycle arrest and cell death in lymphoid tissues. Therefore they are the central component in the treatment of lymphoid malignancies, in particular childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (chALL). GCs act mainly via regulating gene transcription, which has been intensively...

Deregulation of cytokine- and growth factor signaling due to altered expression of endogenous regulators is well recognized in prostate and other cancers. Suppressor of cytokine signaling 2 (SOCS2) is a key regulator of growth hormone, insulin-like growth factor and prolactin signaling pathways that have been implicated in carcinogenesis. In this s...