Gene expression analysis of lung fibroblasts in bleomycin-induced pulmonary fibrosis. Mus musculus

We conducted fibroblast-specific transcriptome analysis by next generation sequencing in order to investigate qualitative change and activation signatures of lung fibroblasts in bleomycin-induced pulmonary fibrosis. Lung fibroblasts were identified by using reporter mice of collagen-α2(I), in which collagen I-producing fibroblasts were labeled with EGFP. Lungs were dissociated with protease sollution, and single cell suspension were stained with lineage markers (Ter119, CD45, CD31, EpCAM). Lineage- GFP+ cells were sorted out and mRNA was collected. Using serial analysis of gene expression (SAGE) method, we identified 2,973,937 SAGE tags (1,080,798 tags from saline-treated GFP+ fibroblasts and 1,893,139 tags from bleomycin-treated GFP+ fibroblasts). We found that genes related to extracellular matrix construction were highly up-regulated in fibroblasts from belomycin-treated lungs. Moreover, an analysis of mRNA profiles revealed biological functions such as proliferation, invasion, adhesion, and migration were promoted in fibroblasts from bleomycin-treated lung, which recapitulated the role of fibroblasts in the fibrogenesis. These fibroblast-specific gene expression profiles will be important notions in future fibrosis studies. Overall design: mRNA profiles of Lung fibroblasts from 3 mice at day 14 after saline or bleomycin treatment.