Ocular surface inflammatory disorder (OSID) is a spectrum of disorders that have features of several etiologies whilst displaying similar phenotypic signs of ocular inflammation. They are complicated disorders with underlying mechanisms related to several autoimmune disorders, such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA), Sjögren’s syndrome, and systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Current literature shows the involvement of both innate and adaptive arms of the immune system in ocular surface inflammation. The ocular surface contains distinct components of the immune system in the conjunctiva and the cornea. The normal conjunctiva epithelium and sub-epithelial stroma contains resident immune cells, such as T cells, B cells (adaptive), dendritic cells, and macrophages (innate). The relative sterile environment of the cornea is achieved by the tolerogenic properties of dendritic cells in the conjunctiva, the presence of regulatory lymphocytes, and the existence of soluble immunosuppressive factors, such as the transforming growth factor (TGF)-β and macrophage migration inhibitory factors. With the presence of both innate and adaptive immune system components, it is intriguing to investigate the most important leukocyte population in the ocular surface, which is involved in immune surveillance. Our meta-analysis investigates into this with a focus on both infectious (contact lens wear, corneal graft rejection, Cytomegalovirus, keratitis, scleritis, ocular surgery) and non-infectious (dry eye disease, glaucoma, graft-vs-host disease, Sjögren’s syndrome) situations. We have found the predominance of dendritic cells in ocular surface diseases, along with the Th-related cytokines. Our goal is to improve the knowledge of immune cells in OSID and to open new dimensions in the field. The purpose of this study is not to limit ourselves in the ocular system, but to investigate the importance of dendritic cells in the disorders of other mucosal organs (e.g., lungs, gut, uterus). Holistically, we want to investigate if this is a common trend in the initiation of any disease related to the mucosal organs and find a unified therapeutic approach. In addition, we want to show the power of computational approaches to foster a collaboration between computational and biological science.

Alternative splicing (AS) is an important aspect of gene regulation. Nevertheless, its role in molecular processes and pathobiology is far from understood. A roadblock is that tools for the functional analysis of AS-set events are lacking. To mitigate this, we developed NEASE, a tool integrating pathways with structural annotations of protein-protein interactions to functionally characterize AS events. We show in four application cases how NEASE can identify pathways contributing to tissue identity and cell type development, and how it highlights splicing-related biomarkers. With a unique view on AS, NEASE generates unique and meaningful biological insights complementary to classical pathways analysis.

Dry eye disease (DED) can be represented as a display of disease in the mucosal part of the eye. It is quite distinct from the retinal side of the eye which connects with the neurons and thus represents the neuroimmunological disease. DED can occur either by the internal damage of the T cells inside the body or by microbial infections. Here we summarize the most common animal model systems used for DED relating to immune factors. We aimed to identify the most important immune cell/cytokine among the animal models of the disease. We also show the essential immune factors which are being tested for DED treatment. In our results, both the mechanism and the treatment of its animal models indicate the involvement of Th1 cells and the pro-inflammatory cytokine (IL-1β and TNF-α) related to the Th1-cells. The study is intended to increase the knowledge of the animal models in the field of the ocular surface along with the opening of a dimension of thoughts while designing a new animal model or treatment paradigm for ocular surface inflammatory disorders.

Alternative splicing (AS) is an important aspect of gene regulation. Nevertheless, its role in molecular processes and pathobiology is far from understood. A roadblock is that tools for the functional analysis of AS-set events are lacking. To mitigate this, we developed NEASE, a tool integrating pathways with protein-protein and domain-domain interactions to functionally characterize AS events. We show in four application cases how NEASE can identify pathways contributing to tissue identity and cell type development, and how it highlights splicing-related biomarkers. With a unique view on AS, NEASE generates unique and meaningful biological insights complementary to classical pathways analysis.

Alternative splicing is a major contributor to transcriptome and proteome diversity in health and disease. A plethora of tools have been developed for studying alternative splicing in RNA-seq data. Previous benchmarks focused on isoform quantification and mapping. They neglected event detection tools, which arguably provide the most detailed insights into the alternative splicing process. DICAST offers a modular and extensible framework for the analysis of alternative splicing integrating 11 splice-aware mapping and eight event detection tools. We benchmark all tools extensively on simulated as well as whole blood RNA-seq data. STAR and HISAT2 demonstrated the best balance between performance and run time. The performance of event detection tools varies widely with no tool outperforming all others. DICAST allows researchers to employ a consensus approach to consider the most successful tools jointly for robust event detection. Furthermore, we propose the first reporting standard to unify existing formats and to guide future tool development.