Near-infrared pre-irradiation is associated with a distinct transcriptional signature in rat gastric irreversible electroporation: an exploratory genome-wide analysis.

Near-infrared (NIR) pre-irradiation before irreversible electroporation (IRE), or NIRE, augments apoptosis in rat stomach, but its transcriptional correlates are unknown. We profiled rat gastric corpus from four arms on the Rat Gene 2.0 ST array (n = 3 per arm; light only n = 1) in an exploratory design. Under nominal criteria (fold change at least 1.5, uncorrected p < 0.05), IRE and NIRE altered 1175 and 1365 transcripts versus control and 334 differed between NIRE and IRE. With limma moderated statistics the control contrasts gave 172 and 318 transcripts at FDR < 0.05, but none reached FDR < 0.05 for NIRE versus IRE (minimum 0.198, Nqo2), and unsupervised ordination did not separate the arms (PERMANOVA p = 0.10, an exact test floor). Against the IRE response, 64% of that signature comprised changes induced by IRE that NIRE attenuated or reversed; only 7% was amplification. Competitive gene-set tests gave a nominal, uncorrected signal for the metallothionein family (p = 0.036) and a trend toward lower NRF2/ARE targets (p = 0.057), the latter reflecting an absent IRE-associated antioxidant induction rather than suppression below control; no set survived correction, and a heat-shock panel was unchanged (p = 0.66). These are descriptive, hypothesis-generating observations that nominate candidate programs for validation; they do not establish a mechanism.