Gene expression patterns following unilateral traumatic brain injury reveals a local pro-inflammatory and remote anti-inflammatory response

Background: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) results in irreversible damage at the site of impact and initiates cellular and molecular processes that lead to secondary neural injury in the surrounding tissue. We used microarray analysis to determine which genes, pathways and networks were significantly altered using a rat model of TBI. Adult rats received a unilateral controlled cortical impact (CCI) and were sacrificed 24 h post-injury. The ipsilateral hemi-brain tissue at the site of the injury, the corresponding contralateral hemi-brain tissue, and naive (control) brain tissue were used for microarray analysis. Ingenuity Pathway Analysis (IPA) software was used to identify molecular pathways and networks that were associated with the altered gene expression in brain tissues following TBI. Results: Inspection of the top fifteen biological functions in IPA associated with TBI in the ipsilateral tissues revealed that all had an inflammatory component. IPA analysis also indicated that inflammatory genes were altered on the contralateral side, but many of the genes were inversely expressed compared to the ipsilateral side. The contralateral gene expression pattern suggests a remote anti-inflammatory molecular response. We created a network of the inversely expressed common (i.e., same gene changed on both sides of the brain) inflammatory response (IR) genes and those IR genes included in pathways and networks identified by IPA that changed on only one side. We ranked the genes by the number of direct connections each had in the network, creating a gene interaction hierarchy (GIH). Two well characterized signaling pathways, toll-like receptor/NF-kappaB signaling and JAK/STAT signaling, were prominent in our GIH. Conclusions: Bioinformatic analysis of microarray data following TBI identified key molecular pathways and networks associated with neural injury following TBI. The GIH created here provides a starting point for investigating therapeutic targets in a ranked order that is somewhat different than what has been presented previously. In addition to being a vehicle for identifying potential targets for post-TBI therapeutic strategies, our findings can also provide a context for evaluating the potential of therapeutic agents currently in development.