Epithelial EP4 plays an essential role in maintaining homeostasis in colon. Epithelial EP4 plays an essential role in maintaining homeostasis in colon

The EP4 receptor is known to mediate the protective effect of prostaglandin (PG) E2 in the gastrointestinal tract; however, the exact role of epithelial EP4 in intestinal pathophysiology remains unknown. We investigated the role of epithelial EP4 in maintaining colonic homeostasis by characterizing the intestinal epithelial cell-specific EP4 knockout (EP4 cKO) mice. We found a significant enrichment of genes involved in apoptosis-related pathways in the EP4 cKO colons. Moreover, inflammation-associated pathways were highly enriched and revealed more than half of the top 20 pathways related to immune response. Overall design: Total pooled RNA isolated from 3 individual pools of control Villin-Cre and EP4 cKO colon tissues respectively was used for gene-expression analysis.

EP4受体（EP4 receptor）已被证实可介导前列腺素E2（prostaglandin E2，PGE2）在胃肠道内的保护作用；然而，上皮细胞EP4受体在肠道病理生理学中的具体作用仍未明确。本研究通过构建肠道上皮细胞特异性EP4敲除（EP4 cKO）小鼠模型，探究上皮细胞EP4受体在维持结肠稳态中的作用。研究结果显示，EP4 cKO小鼠结肠组织中，凋亡相关通路相关基因呈现显著富集。此外，炎症相关通路亦呈现高度富集，且在前20条富集通路中超过半数与免疫应答相关。实验设计概述：分别从对照组Villin-Cre小鼠与EP4 cKO小鼠的结肠组织的3个独立混合样本池中提取总RNA，用于基因表达分析。