RNA-sequencing of rat testis after testicular torsion

To determine the impact of ischemia/reperfusion injury after testicular torsion on rat testis, we carried out RNA-sequencing using Illumina HiSeq platform. The differences in the testicular mRNA profiles between the sham operated control group and testicular torsion and detorsion (TD) group were compared. Eight-week-old male Sprague-Dawley rats were used. Each group included three rats. Testicular torsion was induced by rotating the left testis 720° for 1 h, and testicular reperfusion then occurred for 24 h after the surgical detorsion. The quality of the raw RNA-seq files were checked using FastQC (http://www.bioinformatics.babraham.ac.uk/projects/fastqc/), then trimming of adopters and low-quality data was performed with FASTX-Toolkit (http://hannonlab.cshl.edu/fastx_toolkit/). Single-end reads were aligned to the genome assembly of Rattus norvegicus (Rnor_6.0) using Bowtie 211. The bioinformatics analysis of read count data were performed using the iDEP platform (integrated Differential Expression and Pathway analysis: http://bioinformatics.sdstate.edu/idep94/)