PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Athanasios Didangelos
AU  - Katalin Bartus
AU  - Jure Tica
AU  - Michele Puglia
AU  - Bernd Roschitzki
AU  - Elizabeth J. Bradbury
TI  - Rats and axolotls share a common molecular signature after spinal cord injury enriched in collagen-1
AID  - 10.1101/184713
DP  - 2017 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 184713
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/09/27/184713.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/09/27/184713.full
AB  - Spinal cord injury (SCI) in mammals leads to irreversible tissue damage and loss of function. In contrast, axolotls are able to regenerate scar-free the injured spinal cord. To explore new pathological mechanisms, we compared rat versus axolotl transcriptomics and isolated genes shared between species post-SCI. Unexpectedly, multiple transcripts involved in extracellular matrix remodelling, in particular collagen-1, were upregulated in both species after SCI. Proteomics validated persistent expression of the collagen-enriched matrix signature at the protein level. Collagen-1 accumulated in early and advanced rat lesions. Importantly, collagen-1 was likely associated with pathological vascular remodelling rather than classic fibrosis and the transcription factor SP1 was predicted and validated to regulate, at least in part, the expression of collagen-1 in rat lesions.