Postmortem cardiac tissue maintains gene expression profile even after late harvesting

In this study, we monitored the gene expression of 13 tissue samples harvested from a rapid autopsy heart (non-failed heart) and 7 from a cardiac explant (failed heart) through 24 hours of autolysis. The 24 hour autopsy simulation was designed to reflect a typical autopsy scenario where a body may begin cooling to ambient temperature for ~12 hours, before transportation and storage in a refrigerated room in a morgue. In addition, we also simulated a scenario wherein the body was left at room temperature for up to 24 hours before being found. A small fraction (< 2.5%) of genes showed fluctuations in expression over the 24 hr period and largely belong to immune and signal response and energy metabolism-related processes. Global expression analysis suggests that RNA expression is reproducible over 24 hours of autolysis with 95% genes showing < 1.2 fold change. Comparing the rapid autopsy to the failed heart identified 480 differentially expressed genes, including several types of collagens, lumican (LUM), natriuretic peptide A (NPPA) and connective tissue growth factor (CTGF), which allows for the clear separation between failing and non-failing heart based on gene expression profiles.Our results demonstrate that RNA from autopsy-derived tissue, even up to 24 hours of autolysis, can be used to identify biologically relevant expression pattern differences, thus serving as a practical source for gene expression experiments.Gene expression studies monitor the simultaneous transcription levels of genes, and thus bridge the gap between static genomic information and dynamic phenotypes. These studies are used to identify differentially expressed transcripts with respect to measured variables of interest, such as differing environments, treatments, phenotypes, or clinical outcomes, and for the identification of expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL), i.e. genomic regions whose genotype is correlated with the RNA expression in a panel of genetically diverse individuals [1].