Acantholytic skin diseases
Darier, Hailey-Hailey, and Grover's diseases are rare acantholytic skin diseases. While these diseases have different underlying causes, they share defects in cell-cell adhesion in the epidermis and desmosome organization.The transcriptomic profiles of Darier, Hailey-Hailey, and Grover's disease were found to share a remarkable overlap, which did not extend to other common inflammatory skin diseases. Analysis of enriched pathways showed a shared increase in keratinocyte differentiation, and a decrease in cell adhesion and actin organization pathways in Darier, Hailey-Hailey, and Grover's disease. Direct comparison to atopic dermatitis and psoriasis showed that the downregulation in actin organization pathways was a unique feature in the acantholytic skin diseases. Further, upstream regulator analysis suggested that a decrease in SRF/MRTF activity was responsible for the downregulation of actin organization pathways. These findings highlight the significant level of similarity in the transcriptome of Darier, Hailey-Hailey, and Grover's disease, and identify decreases in actin organization pathways as a unique signature present in these conditions. Overall design: To better understand the underlying mechanisms leading to disease in these conditions we performed RNA-seq on lesional skin samples from patients. **Samples GSM7400532, GSM7400547, and GSM7400549 were deleted because the submitter stated that these Samples had data quality issues**