E2f regulation of gene expression in the liver [12 mo]

E2F’s are regulators of the cell cycle and are involved in development and hepatocellular carcinoma. In this study we examine transcriptional changes occurring the liver in E2f1 (1KI) and E2f3b (3bKI) knock in mice. These mice have E2f1 or E2f3b knocked into the E2F3a locus resulting in loss of E2f3a and expression of E2f1 or E2f3b from the E2f3a locus as originally described In Tsai et. al., Nature 2008. Microarrays were used to evaluate transcriptional changes in spontaneous hepatocellular carcinoma that arose due to alterations in E2F expression. Affymetrix microarrays were performed using mRNA samples from 12 month old livers from wildtype (wt), E2F3a knockout (3aKO) E2f1 knock-in (1KI) and E2f3b knock-in (3bKI) mice. Wt and 3aKO samples were from normal liver and 1KI and 3bKI samples were from spontaneously occurring hepatocellular carcinoma.