Repeated Exposure to Wood Smoke Alters Pulmonary Gene and Metabolic Profiles

Wildfires have increased in frequency, size, and intensity in recent decades, due to increasing global temperatures and dryer climates attributable to anthropogenic climate change. Adverse respiratory effects from wildfire smoke are of specific concern for wildland firefighters who have prolonged or repeated exposure to woodsmoke. Following repeated exposure of low and high woodsmoke in rats, we performed bulk RNA sequencing on lung tissue. Lungs were collected from rats exposed to air or low or high smoke (n=8/group) for RNA isolation. Samples were sequenced using the Illumina NextSeq 500 platform.