Transcriptomic and behavioural characterisation of a mouse model of burns pain. Mus musculus

Aim: We performed a transcriptomic analysis of affected dorsal root ganglions in mice following a partial thickness locl burn injury on the left hind feet to gain a better understanding of the molecular changes that accompany burns pain Methods: Male C57BL/6 mice aged 6-8 weeks were sacrificed three days after the burn injury and lumbar dorsal root ganglions L3, L4, and L5 were extracted. Four animals were pooled together to form one biological replicate, and samples were gathered in triplicates. Sequencing was conducted on Illumina NextSeq 500 as 75-nucleotide single-end runs and libraries wre prepared using TruSeq stranded total RNA library preparation. Reads were mapped using STAR aligner and samtools, mapped to mm10 (Ensembl), and count tables generated using HTSeq_count Results: We discovered 30 genes differentially expressed following the burns injury in dorsal root ganglions, among which are Atf3, Npy, Lipn, and others. We identified Cckbr and Grin2b as potential pharmaceutical targets for pain. Conclusion: Neurons undergo mainly an inflammatory and regenerative process following a local burn and enriched neuropeptide signalling processes. Cckbr and Grin2b in particular were identified as potential targets in the treatment of burns pain together with other genes identified in our study Overall design: Dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons RNA were extracted and sequenced in triplicates using Illumina NextSeq 500 as 75-nucleotide single-end runs Please note that the IP (in the BURN_IP sample title) stands for 'ipsilateral' (not immunoprecipitation).