Small and large intestine differ in basal ERK pathway activity

In this experiment, we determined the differences in the transcriptomes of freshly isolated murine small intestine and colon derived crypts. The data shows that the mRNA profiles of the two tissues significantly differ in their ground state. Interestingly, we found that the expression levels of ERK pathway components as well as their positive and negative regulators significantly differ between small intestinal and colonic crypts. This observation indicates that the ERK pathway displays higher basal activity in the small intestine compared to the colon. RNA was extracted from freshly isolated crypts of the small and large intestine of four (two female and male, respectively) mice and sequenced on an Illumina HiSeq4000.