Microarray analysis of gene expression in the livers of C57BL/6J mice fed a choline- and folate-deficient diet. Mus musculus

Non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) is becoming one of the leading causes of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), replacing viral HBV-, HCV-, and alcohol-related chronic liver diseases as major etiological risk of factors for HCC. The goal of the present study was to investigate transcriptomic alterations in the livers of male C57BL/6J mice fed a choline- and folate-deficient (CFD) diet. Feeding mice a CFD diet for 12 weeks caused NASH-like liver injury exhibiting uniform morphological features of human NASH. High-throughput whole-genome transcriptomic analysis showed that 1750 genes were differentially expressed (344 down-regulated and 1396 up-regulated) in the livers of mice fed a CFD diet as compared to control mice. The functional pathway analysis revealed that these differentially-expressed genes were associated with diverse cellular processes, including cellular growth and differentiation, cell-to-cell signaling and interaction, lipid metabolism, inflammation, fibrosis, molecular transport, and drug metabolism. These findings demonstrate that deregulation of global gene expression is the prominent fundamental feature of NASH in mice induced by a CFD diet. Overall design: Male C57BL/6J inbred mice were maintained on either control or CFD diets for 12 weeks. Gene expression profiles in the livers from control mice and mice fed a CFD-diet were investigated.