Effects of triiodothyronine on human osteoblast-like cells: novel insights from a global transcriptome analysis

In order to investigate, at the mRNA level, the signaling pathways through which triiodothyronine (T3) affects osteoblast function, human mesenchymal stem cells derived from adipose tissue were subjected to a pre-established osteoinduction protocol, resulting in osteoblast-like cells, which were cultured with or without T3. RNA-Seq was performed using Illumina platform, and differential gene expression was assessed with DESeq2. Among differentially expressed genes, enrichment analysis was performed for biological processes against the Gene Ontology Consortium database, using both ClusterProfiler R package and STRING. Overall design: The study consists of three groups with three biological replicates each. Osteoblast-like cells were cultured for 72h with no T3 for the control group, and 1nM or 10nM T3 for the remaining groups.