Research Paper|Volume 10, Issue 7|pp 1609—1626

Signatures of photo-aging and intrinsic aging in skin were revealed by transcriptome network analysis

Byuri Angela Cho^1,², Seong-Keun Yoo³, Jeong-Sun Seo^1,^2,³

¹Gong Wu Genomic Medicine Institute, Seoul National University Bundang Hospital, Seongnam, Republic of Korea
²Department of Biomedical Sciences, Seoul National University Graduate School, Seoul, Republic of Korea
³Genomic Institute, , Macrogen Inc., Seoul, Republic of Korea

* * Equal contribution

Received: April 30, 2018Accepted: July 6, 2018Published: July 18, 2018

Copyright: © 2018 Cho et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

There are various factors that alter physiological characteristics in skin. Elucidating the underlying mechanism of transcriptional alterations by intrinsic and extrinsic factors may lead us to understand the aging process of skin. To identify the transcriptomic changes of the aging skin, we analyzed publicly available RNA sequencing data from Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) project. GTEx provided RNA sequencing data of suprapubic (n=228) and lower leg (n=349) skins, which are photo-protected and photo–damaged. Using differentially expressed gene analysis and weighted gene co-expression network analysis, we characterized transcriptomic changes due to UV exposure and aging. Genes involved in skin development such as epidermal differentiation complex component (SPRR and LCE families), vasculature development (TGFBR1, TGFBR2, TGFBR3, KDR, FGF2, and VEGFC), and matrix metalloproteinase (MMP2, MMP3, MMP8, MMP10, and MMP13) were up-regulated by UV exposure. Also, down-regulated lipid metabolism and mitochondrial biogenesis were observed in photo-damaged skin. Moreover, wound healing process was universally down-regulated in suprapubic and lower leg with aging and further down-regulation of lipid metabolism and up-regulation of vasculature development were found as photo-aging signatures. In this study, dynamic transcriptomic alterations were observed in aged skin. Hence, our findings may help to discover a potential therapeutic target for skin rejuvenation.