Estrogen signaling and fatty liver disease

We propose comparing liver gene expression of WT and female ERKO mice early in the high-fat feeding period to animals fed a regular chow diet. Analyzing liver tissue before the fatty liver disease phenotype becomes severe will allow identification of target genes which may be causal. Comparison of regular chow fed WT animals to high fat fed WT animals will allow for identification of hepatic genes up-regulated in response to high fat feeding. Comparison of regular chow fed WT animals to regular chow fed ERKO animals will help clarify hepatic gene expression patterns that may be implicated in increased susceptibility to weight gain and glucose intolerance. Comparison of high fat fed WT animals to high fat fed ERKO animals will provide insight into genes that could be implicated in leading to increased fat accumulation in the liver over time during high fat feeding. Finally, comparison of regular chow fed ERKO animals to high fat fed ERKO animals will help identify genes that may be contributing to increased liver fat accumulation in response to high fat feeding in these animals. The liver tissue was collected from high-fat diet fed and regular diet fed WT and aERKO females for RNA extraction and hybridization on Affymetrix microarrays.