Livers of mice fed an atherogenic diet for 6 or 24 weeks. Mus musculus

To address the molecular basis for atherogenic diet-induced liver injury, we performed microarray analysis using livers at early (6 weeks) and pre-cirrhosis stages (24 weeks) in the development of steatohepatitis. The Atherogenic diet up-regulated the gene expression for fatty acid synthesis, inflammatory cytokines, oxidative stress, and fibrosis, and with down-regulation of fatty acid beta-oxidation. The addition of a high-fat component to the Atherogenic diet up-regulated the gene expression for fatty acid synthesis and transport pathways and down-regulated some of the antioxidant genes. Keywords: time-course Overall design: For oligo-microarrays (AceGene Mouse Oligo Chip 30K; DNA Chip Research, Yokohama, Japan). Each microarray hybridization sample and the reference amino allyl aRNA were labeled with mono-reactive NHS esters of Cy5 and Cy3, respectively. Microarray hybridization and washing were performed according to the manufacturer’s instructions, and then scanned using an Agilent G2505B microarray scanner (Agilent Technologies, Palo Alto, CA, USA), followed by image analysis using GenePix Pro 4.1 software (Axon Instruments, Union City, CA, USA). Microarray data were normalized (LOWESS method) using GeneSpring v7.2 software (Agilent Technologies), and exported into tab-deliminated files for further analysis.