Characterization of the platelet transcriptome by RNA sequencing in patients with acute myocardial infarction

Recent studies using transcriptome sequencing (RNA-seq) characterized the platelet transcriptome in limited number of non-diseased individuals. Here, we expand upon these RNA-seq studies by completing RNA-seq in platelets from 32 patients with acute myocardial infarction (MI).

Our goals were to characterize the platelet transcriptome using a population of patients with acute MI and relate gene expression to platelet aggregation measures and ST-segment elevation MI (STEMI) ( n = 16) vs. non-STEMI (NSTEMI) ( n = 16) subtypes. Similar to other studies, we detected 9565 expressed transcripts, including several known platelet-enriched markers (e.g. PPBP, OST4 ). Our RNA-seq data strongly correlated with independently ascertained platelet expression data and showed enrichment for platelet-related pathways (e.g. wound response, hemostasis, and platelet activation), as well as actin-related and post-transcriptional processes.