A TGFB Responsive Gene Expression Signature is Associated With More Severe Skin and Lung Disease in Diffuse Scleroderma

Primary dermal fibroblasts from patients with dSSc and healthy controls were treated with TGF beta for up to 24h and the genome-wide patterns of gene expression measured on DNA microarrays. 894 genes were identified as TGF beta-responsive in 4 independent cultures of dermal fibroblasts (2 healthy control and 2 dSSc patients). The 894 genes in the TGF beta-responsive signature are associated with induction of growth factor signaling, collagen synthesis and extracellular matrix deposition. Common reference design; we used Universal Human Reference RNA (Stratagene) as our reference for every array; For every hybridization sample RNA was always labeled with Cy3, and reference RNA was always labeled with Cy5 All processed data is displayed as log2 of the LOWESS-normalized Cy5/Cy3 ratio and was multiplied by negative 1 for analysis in the associated publication.