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沉默伤害感受器（silent nociceptors）是一类感觉传入纤维，在正常生理条件下对伤害性机械刺激不敏感，但在炎症过程中会对这类刺激产生敏化。我们此前的研究证实，小鼠的沉默伤害感受器表达烟碱型乙酰胆碱受体α3亚基（CHRNA3），因此可通过Tg(Chrna3-EGFP)BZ135Gsat报告小鼠轻松鉴定此类感受器，相关成果发表于Prato等人2017年发表于《Cell Reports》的研究中。尤为关键的是，我们此前证实，CHRNA3阳性的沉默伤害感受器在经炎症介质神经生长因子（nerve growth factor，NGF）处理后可获得机械敏感性，并证明该过程依赖于从头基因转录。本研究中，我们通过双端RNA测序（paired-end RNA-sequencing）筛选可能参与小鼠沉默伤害感受器机械敏感性获得过程的转录本。本次实验共分析了来自3只不同实验动物的3份对照组样本与3份NGF处理组样本。