Analysis of the expression profile of skin macrophages FACS-sorted from mice overexpressing activin and/or oncogenes of human papilloma virus 8 in keratinocytes.. Mus musculus

We have shown that activin promoted skin tumorigenesis in mice induced by the human papilloma virus 8 oncogenes. Activin attracted blood monocytes to the skin as revealed by depletion of CCR2-positive monocytes. To determine if activin also altered the gene expression profile of these cells, we performed RNA-Sequencing of macrophages FACS-sorted from the pre-cancerous ear skin. We have found that activin induces a pro-migratiory, pro-angiogenic and pro-tumorigenic genes in skin macrophages in vivo. This largely contributes to the pro-tumorigenic function of activin, since macrophage depletion delayed spontaneous tumorigenesis in HPV8-transgenic mice by reducing keratinocyte proliferation and angiogenesis. Overall design: F4/80+CD11b+CD45+ cells were FACS-sorted from the pre-cancerous ear skin of wt/wt, HPV8/wt, wt/Act and HPV8/Act mice and their expression profile was analysed by RNA-Sequencing. Experiment was performed in triplicates, for each replicate ear skin of 3-6 mice of corresponding genotype was pooled.