Transcriptional characterization of reproductive driven liver remodeling

The liver undergoes tissue remodeling throughout the course of a reproductive cycle. During pregnancy/lactation the liver expands in size. Post-weaning, the liver goes through involution, returning to a pre-pregnant state. Here, we deeply, and unbiasedly, characterize the transcriptional profiles in the murine liver across a lactation/wean cycle to reveal the underlying molecular changes associated with these distinct reproductive states. To investigate changes to the liver over a reproductive cycle we conducted bulk RNAseq on livers of wildtype BALB/C mice over the course a reproductive cycle. Mice were bred at 10-12 weeks of age, and litter size was normalized for even lactation burden. Pups were weaned between 10-14 days of lactation to generate synchronized involution groups. Whole livers were isolated from age matached animals at the following time points: non-pregnant (nulliparous), lactation day 10, post-wean days 2, 4, 6, 8 (involution days 2, 4, 6, 8), and 4-weeks post-wean (regressed). Livers were flash frozen and pulverized prior to RNA extraction. Please note that samples were sequenced across multiple lanes or sequencers, resulting in multiple SRR accessions per GSM sample. For proper analysis, all FASTQ files belonging to the same GSM should be combined before processing. Please see more details in the readme.txt.