Faiz A, et al. - In the current study, researchers desired to know how smoking affects Receptor for Advanced Glycation-End products (RAGE) expression. For this investigation, they studied the impact of smoking on AGER, the gene encoding RAGE, expression and on alternative splicing of AGER. For asymptomatic smokers (n = 36) and never smokers (n = 40), they conducted RNA-Seq on bronchial biopsies. Investigators found that smokers have decreased total gene expression of AGER in bronchial biopsies and increased relative abundance of endogenous soluble form of RAGE (esRAGE) isoform. In addition, there was no difference between smokers and non-smokers in the serum levels of total sRAGE. The data show that smoking initiates a protective anti-inflammatory mechanism with reduced pro-inflammatory gene expression AGER and increased relative abundance of anti-inflammatory isoform esRAGE.