Extracellular Vesicle Cargo
Extracellular vesicles will be isolated from frozen blood samples collected from the muscle biopsy participants as well as from samples collected before and after exercise tests. Affinity purification methods will be used to obtain EVs that originated from platelets, brain, and endothelial cells. The protein cargo of these three types of tissue-specific EVs will then be characterized by Somascan analysis. The small RNA content of the EVs will be assessed by RNA sequencing. Statistical tests will be used to assess 1) the differences between ME/CFS and control protein and RNA cargo within each EV subpopulation, 2) the differences in protein and RNA cargo between EVs from different tissues. A key question is whether EVs from specific ME/CFS tissues vs control tissues differ in the protein pathways represented by the EV cargoes, thus indicating dysregulation of the function of those tissues.

Dr. Ludovic Giloteaux will lead this NIH funded (U54AI178855) project for analysis of protein cargo, working also with Dr. Arnaud Germain and Dr. Katherine Glass in the Hanson lab. He will collaborate with the Grimson lab and Jen Grenier’s group in the Genomics Core for analysis of RNA cargo.