Transcriptome profiling of wildtype C57BL/6 mouse with metformin treatment

Background: Metformin, one of the first-line medication for the treatment of type 2 diabetes and gestational diabetes, has recently be suggested for targeting cardiovascular disease, cancer and aging. Therefore, current understanding of the mechanism of this drug is incompletely understood, and the function of multiple tissues, other than liver metabolism alone, may be influenced. Methods: The wildtype healthy mice treated with metformin were compared with controls (treated with double distilled water). The transcriptome changes with/without metformin treatment were probed by using high-throughput RNA-seq techniques Results: A comprehensive mouse transcriptome map with metformin treatment across ten tissues including aorta, eyeball, brain, adipose tissue, heart, kidney, liver, skeletal muscle, stomach and testis, was provided. Function enrichment, network characteristics and disease association of the differentially expressed genes were analyzed. We also compared our expression profiles with related microarray data in order to find conditions that share similar expression profiles with metformin treatment. Conclusions: This dataset could serve as a baseline resource for investigating the potential beneficial or adverse effects of metformin across different tissues. Overall design: Wildtype healthy C57BL/6 mice were treated with either metformin (treatment group) or double distilled water (control group). The mRNA profiles across 10 tissues (including aorta, eyeball, brain, adipose tissue, heart, kidney, liver, skeletal muscle, stomach and testis) were generated RNA-seq technique, in triplicate for each group, using Illumina HiSeq 2500.