Figure 4

Wound-healing genes are differentially regulated in diabetic (unwounded and wounded) skin (A). Skin tissues (unwounded) were collected from normal and diabetic rats on the same day as wound tissues (d 7 postwounding). Total RNA was isolated and 3 µg total RNA was reverse-transcribed, and cDNA was used to evaluate the status of specific wound-healing genes using a Wound Healing RT² profiler PCR Array, as described in Materials and Methods. The significantly (p < 0.05) altered wound-healing specific genes in the diabetic rat skin compared with the normal rat skin (unwounded) are shown with their respective fold changes. (B) Total RNA (3 µg) from wounds of normal and diabetic rats (d 7 postwounding) was reverse-transcribed and subjected to PCR using the Wound Healing RT² profiler PCR Array, as in (A). The differentially regulated genes (p < 0.05) in the diabetic rat wound (compared with the normal rat wound) with their fold changes is shown. Genes that are altered, both in the unwounded diabetic skin (as compared with normal rat skin, as in A) and wounded diabetic skin (as compared with wounded normal rat skin, d 7 postwounding), are enclosed by black rectangular boxes in (B). (C) Differentially expressed transcript levels of wound-healing specific genes in normal rat wound compared with normal rat unwounded skin are presented. A total of 40 genes were differentially expressed (p < 0.05) in the normal rat wound during the healing process (compared with normal rat unwounded skin). (D) Transcript levels of wound-healing genes in diabetic rat wound compared with diabetic rat skin (unwounded). All genes shown were differentially expressed in the diabetic rat wound (d 7 postwounding) with a p value <0.05. Compared with altered genes in (D), wound-healing genes that were upregulated only in the normal rats during the healing process (as in C) are marked in black rectangular boxes in (C). The experiment was done in six animals each from the normal and the diabetic groups. Values are means ± SD.