Transcriptome of Paraquat-induced Pulmonary Fibrosis

PURPOSE: Pulmonary fibrosis (PF) is a pathological state presenting at the progressive stage of heterogeneous interstitial lung disease (ILD). The molecular mechanisms are incompletely understood. We built a mouse model of lung fibrosis induced by paraquat. Using transcriptome analysis, we identified differentially expressed proteins (DEGs) and provided further functional analysis. METHODS: We built a mouse model of lung fibrosis through intratracheal instillation of paraquat. After instillation, mice were kept for 7 and 28 days, respectively. we performed time-series RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) on the lung samples from paraquat treated mice and saline control. The DEGs were verified by qPCR. RESULTS: The transcriptome data found a total of 1345 of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) up-regulated and 844 DEGs down-regulated significantly in paraquat group on day 7. There were 511 DEGs up-regulated and 179 DEGs down-regulated remarkably on day 28 after PQ instillation (Fold Change ≥2 and Q value ≤0.001). We verified 6 significantly changed genes by qPCR, proving the accuracy of RNA-seq. CONCLUTION: Our transcriptomic study assigns genes for fibrogenesis and reveals their dynamic changes from lung injury to repair, providing new insights for the and development of biomarkers and treatment in fibrotic diseases.