Systemic sclerosis (SSc) is an autoimmune disease characterized by fibrosis of skin and multiple organs of which the pathogenesis is poorly understood. Here we studied differentially expressed coding and non-coding genes in relation to SSc pathogenesis with a specific focus on antisense non-coding RNAs. Skin biopsy-derived RNAs from fourteen early SSc patients and six healthy individuals were sequenced with ion-torrent and analysed using DEseq2. Overall, 4901 genes with a fold change >1.5 and a false discovery rate < 5% were detected in patients versus controls. Upregulated genes clustered in immunological, cell adhesion and keratin-related processes. Interestingly, 676 deregulated non-coding genes were detected, 257 of which were classified as antisense genes. Sense genes expressed opposite of these antisense genes were also deregulated in 42% of the observed sense-antisense gene pairs. The majority of the antisense genes had a similar effect sizes in an independent North American dataset with three genes (CTBP1-AS2, OTUD6B-AS1 and AGAP2-AS1) exceeding the study-wide ... (Show More)

Systemic sclerosis (SSc) is an autoimmune disease characterized by fibrosis of skin and multiple organs of which the pathogenesis is poorly understood. Here we studied differentially expressed coding and non-coding genes in relation to SSc pathogenesis with a specific focus on antisense non-coding RNAs. Skin biopsy-derived RNAs from fourteen early SSc patients and six healthy individuals were sequenced with ion-torrent and analysed using DEseq2. Overall, 4901 genes with a fold change >1.5 and a false discovery rate < 5% were detected in patients versus controls. Upregulated genes clustered in immunological, cell adhesion and keratin-related processes. Interestingly, 676 deregulated non-coding genes were detected, 257 of which were classified as antisense genes. Sense genes expressed opposite of these antisense genes were also deregulated in 42% of the observed sense-antisense gene pairs. The majority of the antisense genes had a similar effect sizes in an independent North American dataset with three genes (CTBP1-AS2, OTUD6B-AS1 and AGAP2-AS1) exceeding the study-wide Bonferroni-corrected ρ-value (PBonf<0.0023, Pcombined = 1.1x10-9, 1.4x10-8, 1.7x10-6, respectively). In this study, we highlight that together with coding genes, (antisense) long non-coding RNAs are deregulated in skin tissue of SSc patients suggesting a novel class of genes involved in pathogenesis of SSc.

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