Gene expression pattern of skin biopsies of epidermolysis bullosa simplex patients in comparison with control subjects. Homo sapiens

Tha altered biological pathways in Epidermolysis bulloda simplex, a rare monogenetic skin disease, have not been well characterized. Thus, the goal of this study is to characterize the expression profile of EBS patients compared with normal subjects using genomic expression analyses. Microarray analyses were performed with RNA isolated from skin biopsies. Robust multiarray analysis (RMA) normalization and Smyth’s moderated t test were used to select differentially expressed genes. Expression profiling comparisons show that 28 genes are differentially expressed in EBS patients compared to control subjects and 41 genes in EBS-DM compared to their matched controls. Nine genes involved in fatty acid metabolism and 2 genes in epidermal keratinisation are common altered expressed genes between the two subgroups. These two biological pathways contribute both to the formation of the cell envelope barrier and seem to be defective in the severe EBS phenotype. This study demonstrates, for the first time, the relevance of metabolic cluster, specifically fatty acid metabolism in EBS biology. Difference of expression for three (AWAT2, ELOVL , and SPRR4 ) of the five selected genes were validated using real-time reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction. To our knowledge, the distinctive pattern of gene expression that characterizes EBS versus healthy skin tissue has never been reported. Overall design: RNA used for the microarrays analysis was isolated from superficial 2mm punch biopsies composed of mainly epidermis with minimal dermis amounts of normal-appearing skin of six EBS patients ( two females and four males) and six healthy volunteers.