RNA sequence reveals mouse retinal transcriptome changes early after axonal injury

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to use RNA-seq to investigate the molecular mechanisms of damage in the early stages of the response to axonal injury, before the onset of RGC death. Methods: 12-week-old wild-type (WT) mice were used in this study. The experiment group underwent an optic nerve crush (ONC) procedure to induce axonal injury in the right eye, and the control group underwent a sham procedure. Retinal mRNA profiles were generated by deep sequencing, in triplicate, using IlluminaHiseq2000. The sequence reads were analyzed by CLC genomics workbench and R software. qRT–PCR validation was performed using TaqMan assays. Results: Using an optimized data analysis workflow, we mapped about 66 million sequence reads per sample to the mouse genome (build mm9). Differential gene expression analysis showed that endoplasmic reticulum stress-related genes and antioxidative response-related genes have been shown to be significantly upregulated 2 days after ONC. Conclusions: Our study represents the first detailed analysis of retinal transcriptomes in the early stages after axonal injury. Our results indicated that ER stress plays a key role under these conditions. Furthermore, the antioxidative defense and immune responses occurred concurrently in the early stages after axonal injury. We believe that our study will lead to a better understanding of and insight into the molecular mechanisms underlying RGC death after axonal injury. Overall design: Retinal mRNA profiles of 12 week-old wild type (WT) after ONC or sham were generated by deep sequencing, in triplicate, using Illumina Hiseq2000.