Sus scrofa domesticus breed:Miniature Yucatan Raw sequence reads

Biomarkers for spinal cord injury (SCI) are sorely needed as the current practices of identifying injury severity and predicting outcome in patients with SCI are often inaccurate or difficult to perform. In the current study, we utilized Next-Generation Sequencing to examine the changes in serum miRNA expression after traumatic SCI using multiple injury severities in a large animal (pig) model of SCI that we developed in 2013 (Lee et al. 2013). Our goal was to identify a preclinical set of biological outcome measures that can identify injury severity in the serum, since blood collection is far less invasive than CSF collection. Since miRNA are well conserved across species, and relatively stable in circulation, these are promising molecules for biomarker discovery that can easily be translated into the clinical setting. Our next initiative will be aimed at investigating the changes in miRNA expression within the CSF and serum of human patients with acute SCI.