Compensatory gene expression possibly rescuing impaired brain development in Kit mutant mice

While loss-of-function mutations in the murine dominant white spotting/Kit (W) locus affect a diverse array of cell lineages, brain, organ with the highest expression shows least amount of defective phenotype. We performed transcriptome analysis of the brain of KitW embryos and found prominent gene expression change specifically in E12.5 KitW/W homozygous mutant. Although the other potentially reasonable changes of gene expression were observed, uniform downregulation of ribosomal protein genes and oxidative phosphorylation pathway genes specifically observed in E12.5 brain may act as a kind of genetic compensation system as to exert protective metabolic slowing down against the deleterious effect of KitW/W mutation for the developing brain.