Single-cell genomic profile of articular chondrocytes from CIA rats
The inflammation of articular cartilage in RA is caused by pro-inflammatory factors secreted by the synovium. However, a recent study has shown that chondrocytes in RA patients can spontaneously secrete pro-inflammatory cytokines and MMPs, which undoubtedly provided new thinking for the treatment of RA diseases. We built a CIA model in rats, took the knee cartilage for single-cell sequencing, and sought to verify whether the contribution of chondrocytes to the inflammatory response in CIA rats was consistent with that of cartilage in RA patients. Our present work is the first to show the genome-wide gene expression of CIA rats cartilage and its assciation with chondrocytes in inflammation response by single-cell RNA sequencing. It was the first time to verify that cartilage destruction in RA disease was involved in the spontaneous inflammation of chondrocytes through CIA model animals. Moreover, the specific pro-inflammatory response cell subtypes have also been identified, which was marked as effector chondrocytes (EC) in the CIA rats cartilage. This not only proved that the cartilage of the CIA rat model can well simulate the inflammatory manifestations of RA patients in vitro, but also provided detailed and complete genomic data for the future study of RA cartilage in vitro. Overall design: scRNA-seq was employed to profile sham and CIA rats.