Liver gene expression profiles of catalase knockout mice fed normal and high fat diet

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the most common type of chronic liver disease. NAFLD is associated with obesity, type 2 diabetes, dyslipidemia, and cardiovascular diseases, and characterized by excessive accumulation of triglycerides in the form of lipid droplets. Liver injury in NAFLD through inflammation and oxidative stress ultimately leads to development of nonalcoholic steatohepatitis and liver cancer. Recently it has been reported that catalase, a major peroxisomal antioxidant, plays a protective role in high-fat diet-induced liver injury. In this study, we further investigated the role of catalase in development of liver disease using transcriptome analysis. Catalase knockout and wild type mice were fed either normal chow or high-fat diet and the gene expression profiles in the liver were compared. Total RNA was isolated from livers of wild type or catalase knockout mice fed either normal or high-fat diet for 11 weeks using Trizol method. Agilent’s Mouse Oligo Microarray (44K) was used to examined the gene expression profile. Data was extracted using GeneSpring GX 7.3 (Agilent Technology, USA) and differential expressed genes were compared between groups.