New preprint alert: gene regulatory network modeling of human airway epithelial response to IFN-I

A couple weeks late, but wanted to boost new preprint from the Miraldi, Scull and Rosenberg labs, as it is now available on bioRxiv¹. Big congrats to Anthony and the rest of the study team!

While we know quite a bit about IFN-I signaling in the context of continuous cell lines, we know comparatively less about IFN signaling in the cell types that potentially matter most: the airway epithelial cells which constitute the major targets of respiratory virus infection. Using single cell multi-omics (including 5’ scRNA-Seq and snATAC-Seq) we find there is a core set of IFNb-responsive genes (or IRGs) across airway cell type. However, somewhat surprisingly, we find that the majority of IRGs actually are cell type-associated! We weren’t anticipating this, as the IFN response is typically thought of as monolithic across cell types.

Using gene regulatory network modeling methods pioneered by the Miraldi Lab, we uncovered the regulatory architecture of these cell type-associated responses, as well as steady-state GRNs of individual HAE cell types. We hope this paper will be a resource to those working on airway epithelial biology or virus:host interactions in the airway.