The trapezium cartilage was dissected from the bone within 1 hour of surgical removal from the joint and was snap-frozen in liquid nitrogen and stored at -80 °C。 Cartilage tissue was ground to a powder using Cryo-Cup Grinder (Biospec). Total RNA was extracted using the Qiagen RNeasy Micro Kit according to the manufacturer's instructions, and its concentration was determined with the NanopDrop 1000 spectrophotometer and RNA quality assessed with the Agilent Bioanalyzer. PolyA-selected sequencing libraries were prepared using the TruSeq protocol (Illumina). Libraries were subject to 75 bp paired-end sequencing (Illumina HiSeq 4000).