Intestinal epithelial Kruppel-like factor 5 (KLF5) protects against Th17-mediated immune response in a murine model of colitis

We have developed a murine model with intestinal epithelial specific inducible knockout of KLF5 where we have identified a Th17-mediated immune response. Bulk RNA-sequencing data showed an increase in transcript number of inflammatory markers, such as Il17a and Il22. Furthermore, when we performed GSEA analysis, we observed increased correlation to activated Th17 response responses, and network analysis of pathways indicated a positive correlation with an overall immune response in the intestinal tissue. Along with increased immune response, we performed 16s rRNA sequencing and observed changes in abundance of the microbiota. While we did not observed changes within the alpha diversity, possibly due to the acute response of our current timeline, we found changes that clustered our Klf5 knockdown out from our controls. Overall design: Performed Bulk RNA sequencing and 16s rRNA sequencing on Corn-oil treated and Tamoxifen treated Villin-CreERT2;KLF5(fl/fl) mice.