Genome wide expression from esophageal biopsies of subjects with EoE-like inflammatory diseases, eosinophilic esophagitis, gastroesophageal reflux disease and healthy controls

Esophageal biopsy RNA was isolated from proximal esophageal biopsied RNA from patients with EoE-like inflammatory diseases (EoE-like esophagitis, lymphocytic esophagitis, non-specific esophagitis), patients with active EoE, patients with GERD, and unaffected healthy controls. EoE-like inflammatory disease patients were clinically active at the time when biopsies were taken. None of the patients (EoE-like inflammatory diseases, EoE, GERD and controls) were under anti-eosinophil treatment (including dietary restrictions). The quality of the RNA-seq data was assessed using fastqc v. 0.11.5 1) and RSeQC v. 2.6.4 2). The reads were mapped to the reference genome using HiSat2 v. 2.1.0 3). FeatureCounts v. 1.6.0 4) was used to count the number of reads overlapping with each gene as specified in the genome annotation (Homo_sapiens.GRCh38.94). The Bioconducture package DESeq2 5) was used to test for differential gene expression between the experimental groups. TopGo 6) was used to identify gene ontology terms containing unusually many differentially expressed genes. An interactive Shiny application was set up to facilitate the exploration and visualisation of the RNA-seq results. All analyses were run in R version 3.4.4 (2018-03-15) RNA sequencing of esophageal biopsy RNA