The role of TRPA1 neurons in inflammatory pain

描述（由申请人提供）：有有限数量的健壮动物模型可用于分析与急性和慢性疼痛相关的表型变化。这不仅适用于动物行为，也适用于损伤部位相关组织（包括痛觉神经纤维）发生变化的机制细节。为了更深入地了解炎症如何导致疼痛和高兴奋性，了解这种类型的病理如何导致介导这种致敏的传入神经元的特定队列的分子，细胞和解剖变化将是有益的。在分子水平上，TRP离子通道家族的成员在体内急性和持续性疼痛的形成中起着至关重要的作用，尤其是刺激受体通道TRPA1。TRPA1对机械刺激和热刺激的炎性超敏反应的发展至关重要，这意味着表达TRPA1的传入神经元在炎症信号传导中同样重要。在这里，我们提出解决这些神经元的性质，但不一定是通道本身，通过生成两个小鼠模型，我们将研究它们的表型和形态如何随着炎症过敏而变化，并通过细胞消融，将决定它们在急性和炎症信号传导中的必要性。我们已经开始创建转基因小鼠，其中表达TRPA1的神经元被荧光轴突示踪剂标记，我们将使用该示踪剂在体内建立TRPA1神经元外周和中枢末端的神经化学表型和形态。这些分析将在正常条件下和炎症损伤小鼠模型的背景下进行。接下来，利用这种新开发的转基因策略，我们将针对TRPA1神经元进行条件消融，并确定其在体内急性和持续性疼痛中的作用。总的来说，这些探索性研究将梳理出这一特定神经元群体在体感信号传导和炎症超敏反应形成中的作用，并开发出选择性靶向TRPA1神经元的新型动物模型，为未来对其生理和功能的研究提供依据。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): There are a limited number of robust animal models that can be used to assay phenotypic changes associated with acute and chronic pain. This is true not only for animal behaviors, but also with respect to mechanistic details of changes that occur in relevant tissues at the site of injury, including nociceptive nerve fibers. For a more in-depth understanding of how inflammation leads to pain and hyperexcitability, it will be informative to know how this type of pathology leads to molecular, cellular, and anatomical changes in specific cohorts of afferent neurons that mediate such sensitization. At the molecular level, members of the TRP family of ion channels play essential roles in the formation of both acute and persistent pain in vivo, particularly the irritant receptor channel TRPA1. TRPA1 is critical for the development of inflammatory hypersensitivity to both mechanical and thermal stimuli, implicating the afferent neurons expressing TRPA1 as being of equal importance in inflammatory signaling. Here we propose to address the property of these neurons, but not necessarily the channel itself, with the generation of two mouse models with which we will examine how their phenotype and morphology changes with inflammatory hypersensitivity, and through cell ablation, will determine their necessity in acute and inflammatory signaling. We have initiated the creation of transgenic mice in which neurons that express TRPA1 are labeled with a fluorescent axonal tracer which we will use to establish the neurochemical phenotype and morphology of the peripheral and central terminations of TRPA1 neurons in vivo. These analyses will be done under normal conditions and in the context of mouse models of inflammatory injury. Next, using this newly developed transgenic strategy, we will target TRPA1 neurons for conditional ablation and determine their role in acute and persistent pain in vivo. As whole, these exploratory studies will tease out the role of this specific neuronal population in somatosensory signaling and the formation of inflammatory hypersensitivity, as well as develop novel animal models that selectively target TRPA1 neurons for future studies into their physiology and function.