Comparative analysis of gene expression in ob/ob leptin-treated and ob/ob saline-treated lungs.. Mus musculus

We hypothesize that gene expression in the lungs of these differentially-treated mice are divergent thus contributing to the disparity in their phenotypes. More specifically, (1) Effects of Leptin-treatment of ob/ob postnatal mice lungs are known to be volume-dependent from 2 to 10 wks of age, and are independent of the hypometabolism associated with leptin deficiency. ; (2) Leptin is critical to postnatal lung remodeling, particularly related to enlarged alveolar surface area. In order to test these hypotheses at the gene expression level, we utilized microarray analysis to examine transcriptional differences between lungs of leptin or saline-treated ob/ob postnatal mice. Keywords: leptin, ob, lung Overall design: This study utilizes microarray analysis to test these hypotheses. Three sets of lungs were harvested from both treatments (Leptin or Saline) at around 1 mo. postnatal. RNA was isolated and used for global gene expression profiling (Affymetrix Mouse 430A array). Statistically significant gene expression was determined as a minimum 6 counts of 9 pairwise comparisons, minimum 1.5-fold change, and p < 0.05.