Corneal transcriptome profiling of patients with keratoconus
Keratoconus is the most common hereditary corneal ectasia characterized by thinning, stretching and conical protrusion of the cornea. It's a progressive chronic disease that usually manifests in adolescence and develops over the next 10-15 years. Progression of the disease most often results in a gradual and severe decrease in visual acuity. It has been described that genetic and environmental factors play a significant role in the incidence of keratoconus. The pathogenesis of keratoconus at the molecular level is also under investigation. Our project investigated the pathogenesis of keratoconus using transcriptome profiling. We used RNA-Seq to obtain the gene expression profile of post-DALK corneal samples from 9 patients with keratoconus (4 samples contained corneal stroma, Bowman's membrane and corneal epithelium; 5 samples contained corneal stroma and Bowman's membrane) and 8 control samples of donor corneas (containing corneal stroma and Bowman's membrane) obtained from the eye bank.