Combined metabolomic and transcriptomic profiling approaches reveal the cardiac response to high-fat diet

Purpose: Observing the response of the heart to dietary interventation at the metabolomic and transcriptomic level may have relevance for cardiovascular diseases Methods: RNA Seq of 12 week old WT male mice on chow or HFD and WT female mice on Chow or HFD; RNA was extracted and reverse-transcribed after polyA selection to complementary DNA for sequencing on an Illumina NovaSeq platform Results: RNAseq from heart tissue revealed significant differences in expression of 292 mRNA, with an FDR <0.05. PCA showed that there were significant sex differences in chow-fed mice. It also separated HFD-fed vs. Chow-fed samples for both male and female mice. Conclusions: This work reveals the response of a vital organ to dietary intervention at both metabolomic and transcriptomic levels, which is a fundamental question in physiology that may have relevance for cardiovascular diseases. This work also reveals significant sex differences in cardiac metabolites and gene expression. RNA Seq of 12 week old WT male mice on Chow or HFD and WT female mice on Chow or HFD