Retinoic acid-induced Transcriptional Signature in Mouse Fibroblast cells

During intestinal wound healing process, wound-associated epithelial (WAE) cells are differentiated from neighboring crypts and migrate to cover the wound bed. We found that WAE cells can produce retinoic acid via aldh1a3 and secrete it into wound bed. WAE cells and fibroblasts are highly colocalized in wound bed, suggesting fibroblasts can potenlially receive RA signal from WAE cells. To identify genes that can be induced by retinoic acid in mouse fibroblast, we performed bulk RNA-seq using NIH3T3 cells. To define an inducible RA transcriptional signature on mouse fibroblast, NIH3T3 cells were treated with DMSO or 1uM ATRA for 0h, 8h, 16h.

在肠道创面愈合过程中，创面相关上皮细胞（wound-associated epithelial, WAE）由邻近隐窝分化而来，并迁移至创面床以覆盖创面区域。我们发现，WAE细胞可通过aldh1a3合成视黄酸（retinoic acid, RA），并将其分泌至创面床中。WAE细胞与成纤维细胞在创面床中高度共定位，提示成纤维细胞可接收来自WAE细胞的RA信号。为鉴定小鼠成纤维细胞中可被RA诱导的基因，我们使用NIH3T3细胞开展了批量RNA测序（bulk RNA-seq）实验。为明确小鼠成纤维细胞的RA诱导转录特征，我们将NIH3T3细胞分别用二甲基亚砜（dimethyl sulfoxide, DMSO）或1μM全反式视黄酸（all-trans retinoic acid, ATRA）处理0、8、16小时。