title: Identification of up-regulated genes after complete spinal cord transection in adult rats.
abstract: Spinal cord injury (SCI) initiates a cascade of events and these responses to injury are likely to be mediated and reflected by changes in mRNA concentrations. As a step towards understanding the complex mechanisms underlying repair and regeneration after SCI, the gene expression pattern was examined 4.5 days after complete transection at T8-9 level of rat spinal cord. Improved subtractive hybridization was used to establish a subtracted cDNA library using cDNAs from normal rat spinal cord as driver and cDNAs from injured spinal cord as tester. By expressed sequence tag (EST) sequencing, we obtained 73 EST fragments from this library, representing 40 differentially expressed genes. Among them, 32 were known genes and 8 were novel genes. Functions of all annotated genes were scattered in almost every important field of cell life such as DNA repair, detoxification, mRNA quality control, cell cycle control, and signaling, which reflected the complexity of SCI and regeneration. Then we verified subtraction results with semiquantitative RT-PCR for eight genes. These analyses confirmed, to a large extent, that the subtraction results accurately reflected the molecular changes occurring at 4.5 days post-SCI. The current study identified a number of genes that may shed new light on SCI-related inflammation, neuroprotection, neurite-outgrowth, synaptogenesis, and astrogliosis. In conclusion, the identification of molecular changes using improved subtractive hybridization may lead to a better understanding of molecular mechanisms responsible for repair and regeneration after SCI.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurobiology, Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, Beijing, PR China.
authors.forename: Zhenlian
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Ma
authors.forename: Tao
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Xin
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Tao
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.forename: Lin
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Xiao
authors.forename: Haiping
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Que
authors.forename: Donghua
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Tian
authors.forename: Shuqian
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Jing
authors.forename: Shaojun
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Liu
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D019295:Computational Biology; D020224:Expressed Sequence Tags; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D005786:Gene Expression Regulation; D015723:Gene Library; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis; D012313:RNA / Q000302:isolation & purification / Q000378:metabolism; D051381:Rats; D017208:Rats, Wistar; D013116:Spinal Cord / Q000473:pathology / Q000502:physiology; D013119:Spinal Cord Injuries / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology
chemical_list: D012313:RNA