The effects of WTAP on islet ß-cell function

The goal of this study is to investigate how WTAP regulates islet ß-cell function. Islets were isolated from pancreatic islets of Wtapflox/flox and Wtap-ßKO mice at 7 weeks old. One islet sample was combined from three mice. Total RNA was extracted using Tripure Isolation Reagent (Roche, Mannheim, Germany). Three independent biological replicates for each group were used for RNA-seq. RNA-seq was performed by deep sequencing using an Illumina Novaseq 6000 platform. Paired-end clean reads were aligned to the mouse reference genome(GRCm38/mm10) with Hisat2 v2.0.5, and the aligned reads were used to quantify mRNA expression by using featureCounts v1.5.0-p3. Our study represents the first detailed analysis of islet transcriptomes from Wtapflox/flox and Wtap-ßKO mice, generated by RNA-seq technology. The RNA-seq analysis showed that 3015 genes were downregulated and 2900 genes were upregulated in the pancreatic islets of Wtap-ßKO mice. Overall design: mRNA profiles in pancreatic islets of Wtapflox/flox and Wtap-ßKO mice were generated by deep sequencing using Illumina Novaseq 6000 platform (n=3 for each group).