Project description:Large scale RNA-Seq analysis was performed to investigate the transcriptomic response to osteoarthritis in cartilage and investigate potential subgroups of patients. Data were collected from intact knee cartilage (posterior lateral condyle) from at total of 60 patients with osteoarthritis (OA) following total knee replacement and 10 control non-OA patients following amputation.
Project description:Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most prevalent joint disease with the typifying feature being the progressive degradation of articular cartilage during disease progression. In this study we used whole transcriptome RNA-seq as a tool to compare gene expression changes between age-matched osteoarthritic human hip OA cartilage (n=10) compared to control (neck of femur fracture) cartilage (n=6) [GSE107308]. All cartilage was from patients undergoing acetabulofemoral joint replacement. Cartilage RNA was isolated from cartilage within 2 hr of joint replacement surgery, mRNA was polyA purified and transcript expression was analysed using 78-base paired-end sequencing generating on average 28 million reads/sample sequencing. The data shows excellent correlation with our previous microarray data but identifies significantly more differentially expressed transcripts plus novel transcript variants, several of which have been validated by real-time qPCR. Our work sheds further light on chondrocyte transcriptome expression and highlights gene expression changes and novel transcripts potentially important in osteoarthritis progression
Project description:Articular cartilage is deprived of blood vessels and nerves, and the only cells residing in this tissue are chondrocytes. The molecular properties of the articular cartilage and the architecture of the extracellular matrix demonstrate a complex structure that differentiates on the depth of tissue. Osteoarthritis (OA) is a degenerative joint disease, the most common form of arthritis, affecting the whole joint. It is associated with ageing and affects the joints that have been continually stressed throughout life including the knees, hips, fingers, and lower spine region. OA is a multifactorial condition of joint characterised by articular cartilage loss, subchondral bone sclerosis, and inflammation leading to progressive joint degradation, structural alterations, loss of mobility and pain. Articular cartilage biology is well studied with a focus on musculoskeletal diseases and cartilage development. However, there are relatively few studies focusing on zonal changes in the cartilage during osteoarthritis.
Project description:Identify the therapeutic targets/pathways of Osteoarthritis (OA), the most frequent joint disease. Surgery-induced cartilage degeneration is used as an experimental model for OA in mice. An inducible cartilage-specific c-Fos loss-of-function model is generated by combining c-fos floxed and Col2a1-CreERT mice. Since c-Fos mutant mice have more severe phenotype than c-Fos wild type mice, we focused on c-Fos-related signaling pathway in the articular cartilage.
Project description:This experiment captures the expression of genes between two sites of human cartilage within the same patients to allow investigation of genomic responses to damage during osteoarthritis. Eight patients with symptomatic OA undergoing total knee replacement (n=8, age range 65-79 years, mean age 70.3) were used in this study. Cartilage from paired osteochondral samples were isolated from the intact PLC (posterior lateral condyle) and the damaged DMC (distal medial condyle) for RNA-seq analysis.