Transcriptional Profiling of Psoriasis Using RNA-seq Reveals Previously Unidentified Differentially Expressed genes

The transcriptomic profiling of psoriasis has led to an increased understanding of disease pathogenesis. Although microarray technologies have been instrumental in this regard, it is clear that these tools detect an incomplete set of DEGs. RNA-seq can be used to supplement these prior technologies. Here, the use of RNAseq methods substantially increased the number of psoriasis-related DEGs. Furthermore, DEGs that were uniquely identified by RNA-seq, but not in other published microarray studies, further supported the role of IL-17 and tumor necrosis factor-a synergy in psoriasis. Examination of one of these factors at the protein level confirmed that RNA-seq is a powerful tool that can be used to identify molecular factors present in psoriasis lesions, and may be useful in the identification of therapeutic targets that to our knowledge have not been reported previously. Further studies are in progress to determine the biological significance of DEGs uniquely discovered by RNA-seq. Overall design: To define the transcriptomic profile of psoriatic skin, three pairs of lesional and nonlesional skin biopsy specimens were taken from patients with untreated moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis.