NGF-induced gene expression in silent nociceptors

Silent nociceptors are sensory afferents that are insensitive to noxious mechanical stimuli under normal conditions but become sensitized to such stimuli during inflammation. We had previously shown that mouse silent nociceptors express the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor alpha-3 subunit (CHRNA3) and can thus readily be identified in Tg(Chrna3-EGFP)BZ135Gsat reporter mice (Prato et al. Cell Reports 2017). Most importantly, we had shown that CHRNA3+ slient nociceptors acquire mechanosensitivity upon treatment with the inflammatory mediator nerve growth factor and demonstrated that this process requires de-novo gene transcription. Here, we performed paired-end RNA-sequencing to identify transcripts that might be involved in the acquisition of mechanosenstivity in mouse silent nociceptors. 3 Controls and 3 NGF-treated samples from three different animals were analyzed