Replacing skeletal muscle alpha-actin with cardiac actin in mouse skeletal muscle

Skeletal muscle actin mice (Crawford et al., (2002) Mol Cell Biol 22, 5587) were crossed with cardiac actin transgenic mice (termed "ACTC^Coco" or "Coco" for short), to produce mice that had cardiac actin instead of skeletal muscle actin in their skeletal muscles (termed "ACTC^Co/KO" or for short "Coco/KO"). Microarray analysis using the Illumina mouse-6 v1.1 expression beadchip was performed on RNA extraced from the soleus muscle of Coco/KO mice and wildtype mice, to confirm the swith in actin isoform expression, and to determine what other differences might exist between wildtype mice and the Coco/KO mice. Keywords: genetic modification 3 RNA samples (each being the pool of two individual samples extracted from different soleus muscles from different individual mice) per genotype (either wildtype or Coco/KO) were used. The total 6 RNA samples were processed using an Illumina mouse-6 v1.1expression beadchip and then the differentially expressed genes determined.