Quantitative Analysis of Notch mutant (Notch1&2-null, Psen1&2-null, RBPjk-null) and wild-type hair follicle transcriptomes by NGS

The goals of this study is to test whether NICD presence protects the RBPjk-null Hair Follicles by altering gene expression via association with other DNA binding proteins at P3, just before the conversion to TSLP-producing keratin cysts. Overall design: Methods: Skin samples were embedded in OCT. Sectioned at 20µm thickness. Dehydrated in EtOH, and equilibrated to Xylene before the LCM procedure. Laser capture was performed with Arcturus Veritas. Methods: ~100 hair follicles from Notch-null, PS-null, RBPjk-null and wild-type samples were pooled into 3 biological replicates for each genotype and subjected to RNA isolation followed by RNA-Seq. Conclusions: A total of 2047 genes were differentially expressed (=1.5 fold) in three or more biological replicates of Notch mutant hair follicles compared to wild-type controls (p-value<0.05). Unsupervised hierarchical clustering analysis failed to distinguish between the mutants.