Small and large intestine differ in basal ERK pathway activity

In this experiment, we determined the differences in the transcriptomes of freshly isolated murine small intestine and colon derived crypts. The data shows that the mRNA profiles of the two tissues significantly differ in their ground state. Interestingly, we found that the expression levels of ERK pathway components as well as their positive and negative regulators significantly differ between small intestinal and colonic crypts. This observation indicates that the ERK pathway displays higher basal activity in the small intestine compared to the colon. RNA was extracted from freshly isolated crypts of the small and large intestine of four (two female and male, respectively) mice and sequenced on an Illumina HiSeq4000.本实验旨在探究新鲜分离的小鼠小肠与结肠来源隐窝的转录组差异。数据表明，两种组织的mRNA表达谱在基础稳态下存在显著差异。值得注意的是，我们发现ERK（细胞外信号调节激酶，Extracellular Signal-Regulated Kinase）通路组分及其正负调控因子的表达水平在小肠隐窝与结肠隐窝间存在显著差异。该观察结果表明，相较于结肠，小肠内的ERK通路基础活性更高。我们从四只（雌性、雄性各两只）小鼠的小肠与大肠新鲜分离的隐窝中提取RNA，并使用Illumina HiSeq4000测序平台完成转录组测序。