Transcriptome analysis of airborne PM2.5-induced detrimental effects on human keratinocytes

•RNA-Seq analysis revealed that PM2.5 showed harmful effects on keratinocytes.•PM2.5 caused epidermal dysfunctions by altering the expression of barrier markers.•PM2.5 caused significant changes of psoriatic skin disease-related genes.

Ambient air pollution is becoming more severe worldwide, posing a serious threat to human health. Fine airborne particles of particulate matter (PM2.5) show higher cytotoxicity than other coarse fractions. Indeed, PM2.5 induces cardiovascular or respiratory damage; however, few studies have evaluated the detrimental effect of PM2.5 to normal human skin. We used a next-generation sequencing-based (RNA-Seq) method with transcriptome and Gene Ontology (GO) enrichment analysis to determine the harmful influences of PM2.5 on human normal epidermal keratinocytes. DAVID analysis showed that the most significantly enriched GO terms were associated with epidermis-related biological processes such as “epidermis development (GO: 0008544)” and “keratinocyte differentiation (GO: 0030216)”, suggesting that PM2.5 has some deleterious effects to the human epidermis. In addition, Ingenuity Pathway Analysis predicted inflammation-related signaling as one of the major PM2.5-induced signaling pathways, and pro-inflammatory cytokines as upstream regulators with symptoms similar to psoriasis as downstream effects.PM2.5 caused considerable changes in the expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines and psoriatic skin disease-related genes, might lead to epidermal dysfunctions. Our results might help to understand the mechanism of air pollution-induced skin barrier perturbation and contribute to the development of a new strategy for the prevention or recovery of the consequent damage.