Mild food restriction and gene expression profile (brain)

The aim of this study is to obtain the gene expression profiles of the brain of young growing rats after mild restriction of food intake for one week or one month. Male Wistar rats, at 6 weeks of age, were fed with reduced diet (5%, 10%, 20% and 30% restriction) for one week or one month (n=5). After 16h fasting, the brain was then extracted and total RNA was isolated using an RNeasy mini kit with DNase treatment (QIAGEN). The RNA samples were pooled from five rats for each group. Then, DNA microarray analysis was performed using the GeneChip (Affymetrix) on each pooled RNA sample.