LIRTS Viewer: A Web-Based Resource to View the Transcriptional Response of Lens Epithelial Cells to Injury
Date
2025-07-18
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science (IOVS)
Abstract
Purpose: Residual lens epithelial cells (LECs) respond to injury after cataract surgery, leading to posterior capsular opacification (PCO). Transcriptomic profiling of lens capsule–associated cells (CACs) post-cataract surgery (PCS) revealed that LECs quickly alter their transcriptome, producing numerous pro-inflammatory cytokines within a few hours PCS. In contrast, the significant activation of TGFβ signaling and fibrotic extracellular matrix deposition related to PCO only begins 1 to 3 days later. However, the global changes in gene expression in CACs, following the establishment of robust TGFβ signaling, remain unknown.
Methods: Lens fiber cells were removed from wild-type mice, and CACs were isolated at 0, 72, or 120 hours PCS to perform bulk RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) to obtain estimates of RNA abundance. These data were combined with existing RNA-seq datasets to create a web-based visualization resource to explore the expression dynamics of most protein coding genes in CACs.
Results: At 72 hours PCS, CACs differentially express genes consistent with a surge in proliferation and changes in actin filament organization while also robustly expressing fibrotic marker genes by 120 hours PCS. We developed a data visualization resource, the Lens Injury Response Time Series (LIRTS) Viewer, which integrates all data to gather valuable insights from gene expression in CACs over the first 5 days PCS.
Conclusions: The LIRTS Viewer is useful for generating hypotheses related to PCO pathogenesis, as it reveals CAC gene expression dynamics, gene correlations, and biological pathways during the first 5 days following lens injury in an in vivo cataract surgery model.
Description
This article was originally published in Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science (IOVS). The version of record is available at: https://doi.org/10.1167/iovs.66.9.53.
Copyright 2025 The Authors
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Keywords
posterior capsular opacification, injury, gene expression, lens epithelial cells, fibrosis
Citation
Suhotro Gorai, Adam P. Faranda, Mahbubul H. Shihan, Yan Wang, Melinda K. Duncan; LIRTS Viewer: A Web-Based Resource to View the Transcriptional Response of Lens Epithelial Cells to Injury. Invest. Ophthalmol. Vis. Sci. 2025;66(9):53. https://doi.org/10.1167/iovs.66.9.53.