Genome wide expression data from discordant twins (ulcerative colitis, primary mucosal tissue)

Background and aims. The etiopathology of inflammatory bowel diseases is still poorly understood. To date, only few little data are available on the microbiota composition in ulcerative colitis (UC), representing a major subform of inflammatory bowel diseases. Currently, one of the main challenges is to unravel the interactions between genetics and environmental factors in the onset or during the progression and maintenance of the disease. The aim of the present study was to analyse twin pairs discordant for UC for both gut microbiota dysbiosis and host expression profiles at a mucosal level and to get insight into the functional genomic crosstalk between microbiota and mucosal epithelium in vivo. Methods. Biopsies were sampled from the sigmoid colon of both healthy and diseased siblings from UC discordant twin pairs but also from healthy twins. Microbiota profiles were assessed by 16S rDNA libraries while mRNA expression profiles were analysed from the same volunteers using Affymetrix microarrays.

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Lepage P, Häsler R, Spehlmann ME, Rehman A, Zvirbliene A, Begun A, Ott S, Kupcinskas L, Doré J, Raedler A, Schreiber S