Analysis of gene expressions of mast cells in murine atopic dermatitis-like skin

Purpose: To compare gene expressions of resident and integrinß7-positive mast cells (MCs) in atopic-dermatitis (AD) like skin. Methods: Each MC population from skin was sorted by flow cytometry, and sequencing was performed on Illumina HiSeq 4000 platform. Sequencing data in the form of FASTQ files were mapped onto the Mus musculus genome build GRCm38 using the STAR aligner (version 2.5.2b) with gene annotations obtained from GENCODE (version M22). Differential expression analysis was performed using the edgeR package (version 3.28.1) in R (version 3.6.2) and differentially expressed genes were defined as those with false discovery rate (FDR) < 0.05. Results: Principal component analysis demonstrated three distinct MC populations, and 1157 differentially expressed genes were detected. Integrinß7-positive MC showed both mucosal type mast cell signatures and skin type mast cell signatures, and they specifically expressed migration related genes. Overall design: mRNA profiles of skin resident and integrinß7-positive MCs in non-treated and AD-like skin.