Locational memory of macrovessel vascular cells is transcriptionally imprinted

Abstract

The locational predisposition of vascular pathologies illustrates the need for a better insight into vascular heterogeneity. To investigate the transcriptomic basis of angiodiversity, we isolated and analyzed transcriptomes from endothelial cells and vascular smooth muscle cells from nine different adult canine macrovessels: the aorta, coronary artery, vena cava, portal vein, femoral artery, femoral vein, saphenous vein, pulmonary vein, and pulmonary artery. We identified both reported and novel expression patterns defining specialized adult blood vessels. Our findings also show that adult vascular cells in culture express a remarkably high number of transcription factors crucial to organ development in the embryo. The persistent expression of these genes in culture indicates that these genes are not regulated by the flow or surrounding cell types but are rather fixed in the molecular memory. Therefore, our findings prompt the re-thinking of the extrapolation of results from single-origin endothelial cell systems.