Project description:The study was designed to determine the differential gene expression between burn eschar- and normal skin-derived pericytes. A comparison was also made to determine the gene expression between normal skin pericytes and normal skin fibroblasts and (2) comparison of differential gene expression between burn eschar pericytes and normal normal skin fibroblasts
Project description:Full thickness and deep partial thickness burn injuries heal by scarring. There are several mechanisms thought to be essential for the development of burn scars, but a challenge to studying the skin response to burn injury is that there are few animal models of burn scarring that are either clinically similar to human burn scars or are practical for most investigators to use. The purpose of this study was to examine the changes in RNA expression in human skin to burn injury. This was done by comparing pre-injury tissue from otherwise healthy adults undergoing aesthetic scarification created by branding with a hot metal object to serial samples of untreated wounds in the same subjects.
Project description:Investigation into murine dermal burn wound. Mouse thermal injury induced, and skin excised at 0 hours, 2 hours, 3 days and 14 days post-injury. Transcription profiling of skin excised from thermal injured mouse to investigate the molecular mechanism of murine dermal burn wound.
Project description:Burn injuries are devastating traumas, often leading to life-long consequences that extend beyond the observable burn scar. Burn injury patients commonly develop chronic neurological disorders but the long-lasting impacts of burn injuries on neurons and glia in the brain is unknown. Whole transcriptome RNA-sequencing from cortical excitatory neurons, inhibitory neurons, astrocytes and microglia showed very few changes to the expression of genes with known functions five weeks following a non-severe burn injury in adult mice. However, genes related to GABA-A receptors in excitatory neurons and several cellular functions in microglia was found to be to differentially expressed in burn injured mice. These findings shed light on the long-term effect of burn injuries on the brain and may help identify potential therapeutic targets and windows to prevent neurological dysfunction in burn patients.
Project description:Thermal injury incites inflammatory responses that often transcend the local environment and lead to structural deficiencies in skin that give way to scar formation. We hypothesized that extensive perturbations within burned skin following thermal insult and during subsequent events of wound repair induce vast alterations in gene expression that likely serve as a wound and systemic healing deterrent. A high-throughput microarray experiment was designed to analyze genetic expression patterns and identify potential genes to target for therapeutic augmentation or silencing. The study compares gene expression from burn wound margins at various times following thermal injury to expression observed in normal skin. Utilizing this design, we report that the totality of gene expression alterations is indeed enormous. Further, we observed that the differential expression of many inflammatory and immune response genes appear to be continually up-regulated in burn wound margins seven days or more after initial thermal insult. As it is well established that the inflammatory process must abate for wound healing to proceed, the finding of ongoing local inflammation is cause for further investigation. To our knowledge, this is the first report of the gene expression alterations induced by thermal injury of human skin. As such, it provides a wealth of data to mine with the ultimate goal of better understanding the local pathophysiologic changes at the site of thermal injury that not only affect wound healing capacity, but may also contribute to systemic derangements within the burn patient. Keywords: time course, disease state analysis The study compares gene expression from burn wound margins at various times following thermal injury to expression observed in normal skin. All skin specimens were obtained in the operating room within minutes of being removed from the patient. Burn specimens were taken from wound margins. Harvested tissue at the burn wound margin maximized the capture of viable cells from the multiple lineages important to the healing process and minimized the inclusion of non-viable cells destroyed by full-thickness injury. After isolation, RNA samples were pooled equally by mass as to contain RNA from 5 tissue specimens for each array replicate.