Sex-specific differences in immunity and infection: an integrative approach


A growing amount of evidence suggests that immune reaction to challenge is strongly influenced by the sex of the individual. We hypothesize that the observable sex bias in neurodegenerative disease onset, prevalence, and progression might be caused or exacerbated by sex-specific differences of brain immune cells. In this project, we will investigate sex-specific immunosenescence in the healthy brain and derive potential implications for the observed sex biases in neurodegeneration. Another fundamental assumption of this project is that the integration of sex differences in immunology across data types and diseases should yield novel insights into sex-specific pathophysiology. It is our second aim we will build a semantic integration platform for the interactive querying, visualization, and analysis of sex-specific immune differences across organs, disease, model organism, and treatment. This platform will enable researchers of the RU 5068 and the global research community to easily access and analyse data according to FAIR principles. The subsequent integrative analysis of this data will yield fundamental insights into common and distinct central sex-specific regulatory mechanisms of the immune system, providing insights into actionable molecules, pathways, and cell types.

PROJECT-RELATED PUBLICATIONS



Lucas Caldi Gomes*, Sonja Hänzelmann*, Fabian Hausmann, Robin Khatri, Sergio Oller, Mojan Parvaz, Laura Tzeplaeff, Laura Pasetto, Marie Gebelin, Melanie Ebbing, Constantin Holzapfel, Stefano Fabrizio Columbro, Serena Scozzari, Johanna Knöferle, Isabell Cordts, Antonia F Demleitner, Marcus Deschauer, Claudia Dufke, Marc Sturm, Qihui Zhou, Pavol Zelina, Emma Sudria-Lopez, Tobias B Haack, Sebastian Streb, Magdalena Kuzma-Kozakiewicz, Dieter Edbauer, R Jeroen Pasterkamp, Endre Laczko, Hubert Rehrauer, Ralph Schlapbach, Christine Carapito , Valentina Bonetto, Stefan Bonn, Paul Lingor (2024)
Multiomic ALS signatures highlight subclusters and sex differences suggesting the MAPK pathway as therapeutic target
Nat Commun. 15:4893

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Rahman RU, Liebhoff AM, Bansal V, Fiosins M, Rajput A, Sattar A, Magruder DS, Madan S, Sun T, Gautam A, Heins S, Liwinski T, Bethune J, Trenkwalder C, Fluck J, Mollenhauer B, Bonn S. (2020)
SEAweb: The small RNA Expression Atlas web application
Nucleic Acids Res 48(D1): D204–D219

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Marouf M, Machart P, Bansal V, Kilian C, Magruder DS, Krebs CF, Bonn S. (2020)
Realistic in silico generation and augmentation of single-cell RNA-seq data using generative adversarial networks
Nat Commun 11:166

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Menden K, Marouf M, Oller S, Magruder DS, Dalmia A. Heutink P, Bonn S. (2020)
Deep-learning-based cell composition analysis from tissue expression profiles
Sci Adv 6:30

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Xie K, Ryan DP, Pearson BL, Henzel KS, Neff F, Vidal R, Hennion M, Lehmann I, Schleif M, Schröder S, Adler T, Rathkolb B, Rozman J, Schütz AL, Prehn C, Mickael ME, Weiergräber M, Adamski J, Busch DH, Ehninger G, Matynia A, Jackson WS, Wolf E, Fuchs H, Durner V, Bonn S, Angelis M, Ehninger D. (2018)
Epigenetic alterations in longevity regulators, reduced life span, and exacerbated aging-related pathology in old father offspring mice
Proc Natl Acad Sci U. S. A. 115: E2348–E2357

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Hatje K, Rahman RU, Vidal R, Simm D, Hammesfahr B, Bansal V, Rajput A, Mickael ME, Sun T, *Bonn S, *Kollmar M. (2017)
The landscape of human mutually exclusive splicing
Mol. Syst. Biol. 13(12): 959.

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Rahman RU, Gautam A, Bethune J, Sattar A, Fiosins M, Magruder DS, Capece V, Shomroni O, Bonn S. (2018)
Oasis 2: Improved online analysis of small RNA-seq data
BMC Bioinformatics 19:54

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Bansal V, Mitjans M, Burik CAP, Linner RK, Okbay A, Rietveld CA, Begemann M, Bonn S, Ripke S, de Vlaming R, Nivard MG, Ehrenreich H, Koellinger PD. (2018)
Genome-wide association study results for educational attainment aid in identifying genetic heterogeneity of schizophrenia
Nat. Commun 9: 3078

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Halder R, Hennion M, Vidal R, Shomroni O, Rahman RU, Rajput A, Pena Centeno T, Van Bebber F, Capece V, Garcia Vizcaino JC, Schuetz AL, Burkhardt S, Benito E, Navarro Sala M, Bahari Javan S, Haass C, Schmid B, Fischer A, Bonn S. (2015)
DNA methylation changes in plasticity genes accompany the formation and maintenance of memory
Nat. Neurosci 19:102-10

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Capece V, Garcia Vizcaino JC, Vidal R, Rahman RU, Pena Centeno T, Shomroni O, Suberviola I, Fischer A, Bonn S. (2015)
Oasis: online analysis of small RNA deep sequencing data
Bioinformatics 31: 2205–2207

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