Purpose: We used RNA sequencing to investigate the effect of acupuncture treatment on retinal transcritome after optic nerve injury Methods: Retinal mRNA profiles of 5-week-old wild-type (WT), optic nerve crush injury (ONC), ONC injury with acupuncture treatment at acupoint GB20 (ONC-F) and ONC injury with acupuncture treatment at acupoint BL1 (ONC-J) mice were generated by deep sequencing, in triplicate, using Illumina Hiseq platform. The sequence reads that passed quality filters were analyzed with DESeq2 R package to identify differently expressed genes with padj<0.05. qRT–PCR validation was performed using TaqMan and SYBR Green assays Results: RNA-seq revealed that 436 genes including 31 transcription factors (TFs) were changed after injury, which include many well-known neural degeneration related TFs such as Jun, Ddit3, Atf3 and Atf4. Interestingly, acupuncture treatment at acupoint GB20 (Fengchi) or BL1(Jingming) after ONC injury both resulted in change of retinal gene expression, compared with ONC injury without treatment; furthermore, acupuncture treatment also reversed several gene expression status induced by axon injury. Conclusions: Our research first reported that acupuncture treatment after injury can regulated retinal transcriptome and reversed the gene expression level induced after injury, which will provide novel therapeutic targets for treatment of retinopathy diseases.

Jun, Ddit3, Atf3, Atf4, Sprr1a, Gm29374, Gm38403, Ecel1, Mmp12, Cox6a2, Cyb5r2, Tmc1, Chac1, Gm47593, AC167169.1, Plaur, Top2a, Hmox1, Hrk, Sox11
Cdkn1a, Lad1, Tnfrsf12a, Scn4b, Ppp1r1c, Irx4, Gpr101, Hapln1, Efcab1, Pou4f2, Htr1b, Ctxn3, Kctd19, D130079A08Rik, Tusc5, Pvalb, 2600014E21Rik, Irx2, Tbx20, Isl2
Tppp3, Sncg, Hydin, Arid5a, Egr3, Atf5, Creb5, Cebpb, Ddit3, Fosl2, Klf6, Bcl6, Tead3, Bhlhe40, Tsc22d1, Six3, Sebox, Myt1I, Ebf1, Scrt1
Irx6, Eomes, Zicl, Pou6f2, Pou4f1, IsI2