Expression data from thymic endothelial cells after damage (2)

The thymus is extremely sensitive to damage but also has a remarkable ability to repair itself. However, the mechanisms underlying this endogenous regeneration remain poorly understood and this capacity diminishes considerably with age. To identify alternate regeneration pathways in the thymus, we performed an unbiased transcriptome analysis of the non-hematopoietic (CD45-) stromal cell compartment of the thymus, which is less sensitive to thymic damage compared to the CD45+ hematopoietic compartment. We compared the gene expression of freshly isolated ECs from the mouse thymus at days 0 and 4 after a sublethal dose of total body irradiation (SL-TBI, 550cGy). Thymic non-hematopoietic stromal cells were isolated using CD45 MACS cell depletion. Endothelial cells were then FACS purified (CD45- EpCAM- VE-Cad+). Microarray analysis was performed on an Affymetrix MOE 430 A 2.0 platform in triplicate for freshly isolated ECs from untreated mice, and in duplicate for day 4 SL-TBI mice.