Abstract
BackgroundPhotoaging is cumulative damage to skin, caused by chronic, repeated solar radiation exposure. Its molecular mechanisms are poorly understood at the level of global gene expression.ObjectiveThis study set out to uncover genes and functional modules involved in photoaging at the level of transcription, with the use of skin samples from Chinese women.MethodsUsing the Illumina microarray platform, we compared the genome-wide expression profiles of 21 pairs of sun-exposed pre-auricular and sun-protected post-auricular skin samples from northern Chinese women.ResultsWith microarray analysis, 1,621 significantly regulated genes due to photoaging were identified from skin samples. These genes were subjected to functional enrichment analyses with both the Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) annotation databases. As revealed by the functional analyses, the up-regulated functional modules in sun-exposed pre-auricular skin were related to various cellular activities in regulation of the skin homeostasis (e.g., the KEGG pathways TGF-beta signaling pathway and ECM-receptor interaction), whereas the down-regulated functional modules were mostly metabolic-related. Additionally, five selected genes (HOXA5, LEPR, CLDN5, LAMC3, and CGA) identified as differentially-expressed were further confirmed by quantitative real-time PCR (Q-RT-PCR).ConclusionOur findings suggest that disruption of skin homeostasis and down-regulation of skin metabolism may play important roles in the process of photoaging.
Highlights
Human skin undergoes both intrinsic and extrinsic aging processes [1]
Our findings suggest that disruption of skin homeostasis and down-regulation of skin metabolism may play important roles in the process of photoaging
Different from acute sun damage to skin, photoaging is a cumulative process that is caused by chronic, repeated exposure to solar radiation
Summary
Human skin undergoes both intrinsic and extrinsic aging processes [1]. Extrinsic aging is mainly caused by solar irradiation, and is termed ‘‘photoaging’’. Different from acute sun damage to skin, photoaging is a cumulative process that is caused by chronic, repeated exposure to solar radiation. It has been suggested that photoaging is a predominant factor in the prematurely aged appearance of sunexposed skin [3]. Various molecules, such as collagen [4], matrix metalloproteinases [5,6], elastin binding protein, versican [7], hyaluronic acid [8], and keratins [9], were identified as affecting the appearance of photoaged skin. Photoaging is cumulative damage to skin, caused by chronic, repeated solar radiation exposure. Its molecular mechanisms are poorly understood at the level of global gene expression
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