In vivo transcriptomic responses to mercury chloride exposure in rat kidney tissue

In this study we tested the ability to predict organ injury from transcriptomics data in Sprague-Dawley rats at early time points after exposure to mercury chloride (10 and 34 hours). We selected mercury chloride, a compound extensively used in animal studies for its ability to cause acute kidney and liver damage. We treated 30 Sprague-Dawley rats with saline solution (control), 0.25 mg/kg (low dose), and 0.50 mg/kg (high dose) to produce different degrees of injury. RNA samples for gene expression analysis were collected from the kidney at 10 and 34 hours. Number of repicates were five.