Ascending dorsal column sensory neurons respond to spinal cord injury and downregulate genes related to lipid metabolism

The goal of this study was to compare the transcriptional effects of sciatic nerve injury and spinal cord injury on lumbar dorsal root ganglion (DRG) and FACS-sorted dorsal column (DC) sensory neurons. We performed RNA-seq of whole DRG from naïve and spinal cord-injured (SCI) mice (1dpi) and compared this with previously published data for sciatic nerve transection. In order to assess changes specifically in DC neurons, we performed RNA-seq from FACS-sorted DC neurons from Thy1-YFP16 transgenic mice in naïve, sciatic nerve injured (SNI), and SCI (1 and 3dpi). We found that DC neurons alter their transcriptome after SCI, but that gene changes after SCI mostly differ from SNI. These transcriptional differences may reflect both growth promoting and growth inhibitory effects on axon regeneration after SCI.