Antioxidants gene expressions in two tissues suspected to be involved in Decompression Sickness (DCS) triggering, in DCS resistant rats_Data

Susceptibility to decompression sickness (DCS) is characterized by a wide interindividual variability which origin is still poorly understood. To better understand its mechanisms, we previously selectively bred rats with at least a 3-fold greater resistance to DCS. We sought study the expression of some genes of these resistant rats, related to antioxidant mechanisms and mitochondrial biogenesis in their lungs and their livers.We realized a quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RTq-PCR) approach from non-resistant Wistar rats (6 males, 6 females) and DCS-resistant rats (6 males, 6 females) and we used 2-way ANOVA by studying the parts attributable to the selection (resistant or non-resistant rats), the gender of the animals and the interaction of the 2 factors.In the lung, we observed a main effect of selection with an overexpression in resistant rats compared to non-resistant rats, for the genes involved in mitochondrial biogenesis (<i>Pgc1α</i>, <i>Nrf1</i> and <i>Nrd2</i>), but no significant differences in the expression of the antioxidant genes (<i>Sod1</i>, <i>Sod2</i>, <i>Gpx1</i>, <i>Cat</i>). At the opposite, in the liver, we observed a decreased expression in both group of genes (except for <i>Pgc1α</i>), related to a selection effect.These expression levels in the liver are coherent with the diminution of the Citrate Synthase activity (which reflects the mitochondrial density in a tissue), previously observed in the soleus muscles of our resistant rats. They also highlight a possible key role of the liver and the mitochondria in DCS triggering, with a possible lower ROS production in resistant rats.