Identification of Changes in Gene expression of rats after Sensory and Motor Nerves Injury

Wallerian degeneration is a sequence of events in the distal stump of axotomized nerves. Despite large numbers of researches concentrating on WD, the biological mechanism still remains unclear. Hence we constructed a rat model with both motor and sensory nerves injury and then conducted a RNA-seq analysis. Here the rats were divided into the 4 following groups: normal motor nerves (NMN), injured motor nerves (IMN), normal sensory nerves (NSN) and injured sensory nerves (ISN). The transcriptomes of rats were sequenced by the Illumina HiSeq. The differentially expressed genes (DEGs) of 4 combinations including NMN vs. IMN, NSN vs. ISN, NMN vs. NSN and IMN vs. ISN were identified respectively. For the above 4 combinations, we identified 1666, 1514, 95 and 17 DEGs. We found that NMN vs. IMN shared the most common genes with NSN vs. ISN indicating common mechanisms between motor nerves injury and sensory nerves injury. At last, we performed an enrichment analysis and observed that the DEGs of NMN vs IMN and NSN vs. ISN were significantly associated with binding and activity, immune response, biosynthesis, metabolism and development. We hope our study may shed light on the molecular mechanisms of nerves degeneration and regeneration during WD.