Abstract

Dysfunctional and leaky blood vessels resulting from disruption of the endothelial cell (EC) barrier accompanies numerous diseases. The EC barrier is established through endothelial cell tight and adherens junctions. However, the expression patterning and precise contribution of different junctional proteins to the EC barrier is poorly understood. Here, we focus on organs with continuous endothelium to identify structural and functional in vivo characteristics of the EC barrier. Assembly of multiple single-cell RNAseq datasets into a single integrated database revealed the variability and commonalities of EC barrier patterning. Across tissues, Claudin5 exhibited diminishing expression along the arteriovenous axis, correlating with EC barrier integrity. Functional analysis identified tissue-specific differences in leakage patterning and response to the leakage agonist histamine. Loss of Claudin5 enhanced histamine-induced leakage in an organotypic and vessel type-specific manner in an inducible, EC-specific, knock-out mouse. Mechanistically, Claudin5 loss left junction ultrastructure unaffected but altered its composition, with concomitant loss of zonula occludens-1 and upregulation of VE-Cadherin expression. These findings uncover the organ-specific organisation of the EC barrier and distinct importance of Claudin5 in different vascular beds, providing insights to modify EC barrier stability in a targeted, organ-specific manner.

Data availability

The murine ear skin data has been deposited in GEO under accession number GSE202290. Further details regarding specifics of the analysis will be available upon reasonable request.

The following data sets were generated
The following previously published data sets were used

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Mark Richards

    Department of Immunology, Genetics and Pathology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
    For correspondence
    mark.richards@igp.uu.se
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-2266-3329
  2. Emmanuel Nwadozi

    Department of Immunology, Genetics and Pathology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Sagnik Pal

    Department of Immunology, Genetics and Pathology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-5562-1555
  4. Pernilla Martinsson

    Department of Immunology, Genetics and Pathology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  5. Mika Kaakinen

    Faculty of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  6. Marleen Gloger

    Department of Immunology, Genetics and Pathology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-3319-7642
  7. Elin Sjöberg

    Department of Immunology, Genetics and Pathology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-8799-4874
  8. Katarzyna Koltowska

    Department of Immunology, Genetics and Pathology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-6841-8900
  9. Christer Betsholtz

    Department of Immunology, Genetics and Pathology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  10. Lauri Eklund

    Faculty of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-3177-7504
  11. Sofia Nordling

    Department of Immunology, Genetics and Pathology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  12. Lena Claesson-Welsh

    Department of Immunology, Genetics and Pathology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
    For correspondence
    lena.welsh@igp.uu.se
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-4275-2000

Funding

Vetenskapsrådet (2020-01349)

  • Lena Claesson-Welsh

Åke Wiberg Stiftelse (M21-0109)

  • Sofia Nordling

Svenska Sällskapet för Medicinsk Forskning

  • Elin Sjöberg

Svenska Sällskapet för Medicinsk Forskning (201912)

  • Mark Richards

European Molecular Biology Organization (ALTF 923-2016)

  • Mark Richards

Knut och Alice Wallenbergs Stiftelse (2020.0057)

  • Lena Claesson-Welsh

Knut och Alice Wallenbergs Stiftelse (2019.0276)

  • Lena Claesson-Welsh

Fondation Leducq (17 CVD 03)

  • Lena Claesson-Welsh

Cancerfonden (19 0119 Pj)

  • Lena Claesson-Welsh

Cancerfonden (19 0118 Us)

  • Lena Claesson-Welsh

Cancerfonden (20 1086 Pj)

  • Marleen Gloger
  • Katarzyna Koltowska

Knut och Alice Wallenbergs Stiftelse (2017.0144)

  • Katarzyna Koltowska

Ragnar Söderbergs stiftelse (M13/17)

  • Katarzyna Koltowska

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Animal experimentation: In vivo animal experiments were carried out in accordance with the ethical permit provided by the Committee on the Ethics of Animal Experiments of the University of Uppsala (permit 6789/18).

Copyright

© 2022, Richards et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

Metrics

  • 2,716
    views
  • 563
    downloads
  • 33
    citations

Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.

Download links

A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.

Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)

Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)

Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)

  1. Mark Richards
  2. Emmanuel Nwadozi
  3. Sagnik Pal
  4. Pernilla Martinsson
  5. Mika Kaakinen
  6. Marleen Gloger
  7. Elin Sjöberg
  8. Katarzyna Koltowska
  9. Christer Betsholtz
  10. Lauri Eklund
  11. Sofia Nordling
  12. Lena Claesson-Welsh
(2022)
Claudin5 protects the peripheral endothelial barrier in an organ and vessel type-specific manner
eLife 11:e78517.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.78517

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.78517

Further reading

    1. Cell Biology
    Weihua Wang, Junqiao Xing ... Zhangfeng Hu
    Research Article

    Existence of cilia in the last eukaryotic common ancestor raises a fundamental question in biology: how the transcriptional regulation of ciliogenesis has evolved? One conceptual answer to this question is by an ancient transcription factor regulating ciliary gene expression in both uni- and multicellular organisms, but examples of such transcription factors in eukaryotes are lacking. Previously, we showed that an ancient transcription factor X chromosome-associated protein 5 (Xap5) is required for flagellar assembly in Chlamydomonas. Here, we show that Xap5 and Xap5-like (Xap5l) are two conserved pairs of antagonistic transcription regulators that control ciliary transcriptional programs during spermatogenesis. Male mice lacking either Xap5 or Xap5l display infertility, as a result of meiotic prophase arrest and sperm flagella malformation, respectively. Mechanistically, Xap5 positively regulates the ciliary gene expression by activating the key regulators including Foxj1 and Rfx families during the early stage of spermatogenesis. In contrast, Xap5l negatively regulates the expression of ciliary genes via repressing these ciliary transcription factors during the spermiogenesis stage. Our results provide new insights into the mechanisms by which temporal and spatial transcription regulators are coordinated to control ciliary transcriptional programs during spermatogenesis.

    1. Cell Biology
    Hyunggu Hahn, Carole Daly ... Alex RB Thomsen
    Research Article

    Chemokine receptors are GPCRs that regulate the chemotactic migration of a wide variety of cells including immune and cancer cells. Most chemokine receptors contain features associated with the ability to stimulate G protein signaling during β-arrestin-mediated receptor internalization into endosomes. As endosomal signaling of certain non-GPCR receptors plays a major role in cell migration, we chose to investigate the potential role of endosomal chemokine receptor signaling on mechanisms governing this function. Applying a combination of pharmacological and cell biological approaches, we demonstrate that the model chemokine receptor CCR7 recruits G protein and β-arrestin simultaneously upon chemokine stimulation, which enables internalized receptors to activate G protein from endosomes. Furthermore, spatiotemporal-resolved APEX2 proteome profiling shows that endosomal CCR7 uniquely enriches specific Rho GTPase regulators as compared to plasma membrane CCR7, which is directly associated with enhanced activity of the Rho GTPase Rac1 and chemotaxis of immune T cells. As Rac1 drives the formation of membrane protrusions during chemotaxis, our findings suggest an important integrated function of endosomal chemokine receptor signaling in cell migration.