RNA-seq of Paneth cells

The impact of removal of Mll1 in intestinal Paneth cells expressing an constitutively active form of beta-catenin (beta-cateninGOF) was analysed in 4 pairs of sorted Paneth cells of Lgr5-CreERT2; beta-cateninGOF;Mll1+/- (control) and Lgr5-CreERT2; beta-cateninGOF;Mll1-/- (knockout) mice at 10 days after tamoxifen-induced mutagenesis. Using 75-base-pair reads, around 30 million reads per sample with comparable unique mapped reads (52-93%) were obtained. To analyze differentially expressed genes, we applied DESeq2 analysis to the RNA-seq dataset. Differentially expressed genes in beta-cateninGOF; Mll1-/- versus beta-cateninGOF; Mll1+/- Paneth cells showed both up- and downregulation of genes at a false discovery rate (FDR) of 10%. This included a global increase in the expression of goblet cell-specific genes. Downregulated genes included specific markers of Paneth cells, indicating that ablation of Mll1 in Paneth cells shifted their identity towards a mixed Paneth-goblet cell fate. mRNA profiles of beta-cateninGOF; Mll1+/- (control) and beta-cateninGOF; Mll1-/- (knockout) Paneth cells were generated by deep sequencing in quadruplicates.