Effect of thermoneutral housing on non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in mice

Purpose: To identify the impact of thermoneutral housing as opposed to standard housing on gene expression profiles in the mouse peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs), focusing on proinflammatory immune responses and high-fat diet induced non-alcoholic fatty liver disease pathogenesis. Methods: Expression profiles from PBMCs collected from C57Bl6 mice fed chow or high-fat diet for 8 weeks, following 2 weeks at either standard or thermoneutral housing conditions. Sequencing was performed in duplicate, the Illumina HiSeq 2500. Transcripts that passed quality filters were analyzed at the gene level, using Strand NGS for accurate alignment and quantification. Results: We mapped approximately 20million reads per sample to the mm10 genome using annotations produced by Ensembl, which represented 36186 transcripts. Approximately 14000 genes exhibited reasonable expression in at least one experimental condition. The primary focus was the effect of housing temperature while holding diet consistent (i.e. thermoneutral vs standard, both on high-rat diet), where ~2700 genes exhibited differential regulation. Conclusions: We present the transcriptomic profile of PBMCs from mice fed chow of high-fat diets, following either standard or thermoneutral housing. We obseve an augmented proinflammatory immune response. Overall design: PBMC expression profiles were characterized following eight weeks of chow or high-fat diet, following two weeks of standard or thermoneutral housing.

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Giles DA, Ramkhelawon B, Donelan EM, Stankiewicz TE, Hutchison SB, Mukherjee R, Cappelletti M, Karns R, Karp CL, Moore KJ, Divanovic S