Fig. 1: Kidney expression of transposable elements (TEs) and their association with kidney disease severity in patients and mice. | Nature Communications

Fig. 1: Kidney expression of transposable elements (TEs) and their association with kidney disease severity in patients and mice.

From: Increased levels of endogenous retroviruses trigger fibroinflammation and play a role in kidney disease development

Fig. 1

a Our bioinformatic approach for TE discovery and quantification in 240 human kidney tubule samples. b Boxplot representing the relative (Mean log2 TPM) expression of TE classes, endogenous retrovirus (ERV, blue), long interspersed nuclear elements (LINE, red), and short interspersed nuclear elements (SINE, green) and their families (ERV1, ERVK, ERVL, ERVL-MaLR, Alu, L1, L2, and RTE i.e., other retrotransposons). Center lines show the medians; box limits indicate the 25th and 75th percentiles; the bottom whisker indicates the fifth percentile and the top whiskers indicate the 95th percentile (n = 240 biologically independent samples). c Volcano plot of TEs showing association with kidney fibrosis in human kidney samples. The X-axis shows the beta values in the linear regression model (adjusted) for fibrosis. Y-axis shows the statistical significance (negative log p value). Red dots show higher TEs and blue dots lower TEs (FDR <0.05) in fibrosis. d Heatmap of TE (z-score) expression in human kidney samples. Each column is one kidney sample, and each row is one TE expression. Red indicates higher, blue indicates lower expression. The observed fibrosis in kidney samples is shown at the top. e The relationship between endogenous retrovirus K (ERVK), endogenous retrovirus 1 (ERV1), long interspersed nuclear elements (LINE) and short interspersed nuclear elements (SINE) levels (log2 TPM counts, x-axis), and the degree of kidney fibrosis (y-axis, log2 fibrosis). f Our quantification approach for TE expression in kidneys of murine renal disease models, FA (folic acid nephropathy), and UUO (unilateral ureteral obstruction). g Volcano plot of TEs showing association with kidney disease in mouse kidney samples. The X-axis shows the fold-change (control vs disease). Y-axis shows the statistical significance (negative log p value). Red dots have higher TEs and blue dots have lower TEs (FDR <0.05) in fibrosis. Source data are provided in Supplementary Data 1–4.

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