Transcriptomic Signatures of Kidney Injury in Human Renal Biopsy Specimens

The pathogenesis and molecular signature of human acute kidney injury (AKI) remain incompletely understood, in part, owing to the heterogeneity of the disease. Further, the link between animal models and human AKI is not well characterized. Transcript expression of AKI in 39 native human renal biopsy samples was compared to 9 reference nephrectomies. These data demonstrate that the molecular signature segregates patients with AKI in spite of similar pathological and clinical phenotyping. Such molecular characterization will offer advantages in categorizing and understanding the underlying pathogenesis of phenotypically complex and heterogeneous forms of AKI. Overall design: Bulk 20 um thickness specimens from cross-sectional human kidney biopsies or nephrectomies embedded in OCT underwent RNA sequencing. All biopsy subjects had AKI. Sequencing performed on an Illumina HiSeq 4000.