Single cell transcriptomics analysis of the effect of S100a4 knockout on psoriasis

We employed single-cell RNA sequencing to investigate the pathophysiology of psoriasis and the molecular mechanisms of S100a4 by analyzing alterations in cellular heterogeneity and composition in dorsal skin tissue from differentially treated mice. Overall design: We generated a global S100a4 knockout mouse model and designed three experimental groups to evaluate the effect of S100a4 knockout on psoriasis: 1) sham-control group with Vaseline application (non-lesional); 2) imiquimod (IMQ)-induced psoriasis group (lesional wild-type); and 3) S100a4 knockout group with IMQ application post-knockout (lesional S100a4 knockout). We selected three independent biological replicates from each of three separete groups to isolate the dorsal skins, and then prepared single-cell suspensions for single-cell transcriptomic sequencing.