Psoriasis is a common chronic autoimmune inflammatory skin disease that involves genetic and environmental factors. To date, psoriasis is still incurable. Thus, detection of its underlying molecular mechanisms is urgent. Weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) was performed on the basis of the RNA-Seq data of psoriatic and normal (NN) skin tissues to detect the key mRNAs and long non-coding RNAs (LncRNAs) implicated in psoriasis and to identify psoriasis-related gene modules. Subsequently, 23 independent modules were obtained, and the pink module that contained differentially expressed 212 mRNAs and 100 LncRNAs was the most remarkable. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between psoriasis and healthy control in other RNA-Seq and microarray datasets were integrated to identify convinced psoriasis-associated genes. A total of 312 genes in the pink module and 613 DEGs were scanned. Eleven overlapped key mRNAs were identified, including two known genes (e.g., KRT15 and CCL27) and nine novel ones (e.g., ARSF, CLDN1, DACH1, LONRF1, PAMR1, RORC, SLC26A2, STS, UNC93A). A total of 11 key mRNAs were selected to construct a co-expression network to investigate potential candidate LncRNAs. Seventy-six pairs of LncRNA-mRNA co-expression relationships were found. To validate the findings, CCL27 and LncRNA-AL162231.4 expressions were detected in psoriatic and NN skin tissues. Result of RT-qPCR showed that CCL27 and LncRNA-AL162231.4 decreased in psoriatic lesions with statistical significance (P ≤ 0.05). Our study provides a new direction for elucidating the pathogenesis of psoriasis, but further experiments are still required.

中文翻译：

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使用加权基因共表达网络分析法通过生物信息学分析鉴定牛皮癣的潜在关键mRNA和LncRNA。

牛皮癣是一种常见的慢性自身免疫性炎性皮肤病，涉及遗传和环境因素。迄今为止，牛皮癣仍然是无法治愈的。因此，迫切需要检测其潜在的分子机制。基于银屑病和正常（NN）皮肤组织的RNA-Seq数据进行加权基因共表达网络分析（WGCNA），以检测涉及牛皮癣的关键mRNA和长非编码RNA（LncRNA），并鉴定银屑病相关基因模块。随后，获得23个独立模块，其中包含差异表达的212个mRNA和100​​个LncRNA的粉红色模块最为显着。在其他RNA-Seq中，牛皮癣和健康对照之间的差异表达基因（DEG）和微阵列数据集已整合在一起，以确定与牛皮癣相关的确信基因。扫描了粉红色模块中的312个基因和613个DEG。鉴定出11个重叠的关键mRNA，包括两个已知基因（例如，KRT15和CCL27）和九个新基因（例如，ARSF，CLDN1，DACH1，LONRF1，PAMR1，RORC，SLC26A2，STS，UNC93A）。总共选择了11个关键mRNA来构建共表达网络，以研究潜在的候选LncRNA。找到了七十六对LncRNA-mRNA共表达关系。为了证实这一发现，在银屑病和NN皮肤组织中检测到了CCL27和LncRNA-AL162231.4表达。RT-qPCR结果显示，银屑病皮损中CCL27和LncRNA-AL162231.4降低，具有统计学意义（P≤0.05）。我们的研究为阐明牛皮癣的发病机理提供了新的方向，但仍需要进一步的实验。