Transcriptome profiling of biliary atresia from new born infants by deep sequencing

Biliary atresia is the major kind of liver disease that mainly affects the new born infants. The pathological and biological mechanism of biliary atresia is still unclear to date. In this work, we attempt to identify biliary atresia relevant genes and to get the knowledge of the underlying genetic basis. We collected liver samples from new born infants with biliary atresia and congenital choledochocyst, and the RNA-seq technology was used to performed a transcriptome profiling in order to comprehensively study their expression signatures. We identified 877 differentially expressed genes between samples from biliary atresia and congenital choledochocyst patients in total. Several biological pathways related to the immunity and inflammation response were found to involve in the development of biliary atresia. Our results may helps to better investigate the molecular mechanisms of this disease.